The Megyn Kelly Show - Sam Harris on Political Tribalism, Cultural Divisions and Finding Inner Peace

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.980 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program,

00:00:16.000 we've got Sam Harris. This guy is a philosopher. He's an author. He is host of the Making Sense

00:00:23.580 podcast. And I would say more than anybody else, he is the name that has been suggested to me

00:00:29.140 as a potential guest on the program. And I've listened to Sam in the past, but I was fascinated

00:00:34.140 to see what is it about him that has made him so very popular with the people who listen to this

00:00:39.900 podcast. And now I get it. Now I get it. He's a liberal, but he's not woke. And the way he talks

00:00:47.260 about the woke is incredibly eloquent and thoughtful and smart. And he's one of those guys who just

00:00:52.180 makes you feel like, oh, why couldn't I put it that way? Super smart, very big, big, big-brained guy.

00:00:58.140 But he's very thoughtful. He's pensive. I think you'll find him illuminating on how,

00:01:04.980 A, you could quiet your own mind and, B, enrich it after you quiet it. It may require you being

00:01:11.800 quiet for two months in a row, but we'll talk about that later. But I think we had a good spirited

00:01:16.660 exchange on things like Trump and his fans and sort of the media and their coverage of

00:01:24.340 politicians and their, quote, lies. Anyway, we'll get to Sam in one second. But first,

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00:03:02.580 with Jan Marini. And now, Sam Harris.

00:03:07.500 Really excited to talk to you and also a little nervous because I've been watching a lot of your

00:03:13.180 interviews and listening to your podcasts and you seem like an intellectual giant and I'm

00:03:20.700 feeling ill-equipped to talk to you.

00:03:24.820 Well, listen, I want to put you at your ease because, first of all, I think you and I agree

00:03:31.020 about many things and I'm a fan of yours. I'm happy to talk to you about anything and where

00:03:37.160 we disagree. I think it'll be fun. So let's just go.

00:03:41.440 Good. Okay. I feel a little better. I like to start where I can with news of the day.

00:03:45.040 And you've been so smart and easy to listen to on the topic of wokeness and the religion of

00:03:51.520 wokeness. And just today, we saw a school in Virginia, an elementary school, announcing that

00:03:57.600 it is dropping part of its name, Thomas Jefferson, quote, due to the pain his legacy can cause,

00:04:04.500 not even actually is causing, but can cause black students, despite an overwhelming majority

00:04:10.360 of the parents saying, we don't want this. We are not in favor of this at all, but it's

00:04:16.040 happening. And then here in New York, it was announced not long ago that at one of these

00:04:21.960 sort of expensive private schools, it's actually happening at more than one, parents must now

00:04:27.320 outline their commitment to anti-racism when applying. And they have to attend anti-racist

00:04:34.100 training before they can even get into the school. The anti-racist label is a rhetorical

00:04:39.840 trick. So does all of this concern you? I know you've got daughters and you're concerned about

00:04:45.780 wokeness in general, but I think in the schools, it's especially pernicious.

00:04:49.340 Yeah, well, it does. At first, I think we should just bracket all the heresy we're about to download

00:04:56.360 with an acknowledgement that racism is real and it's a problem and it's been an excruciating

00:05:04.180 problem throughout our history, right? So it's not mysterious, this kind of moral panic we're seeing

00:05:11.580 around the issue of racism now. I mean, we know what the past was like. The problem is that people seem

00:05:20.040 to, one, not want to acknowledge the progress we've made, right? So there's something deranging

00:05:26.280 about acting like this is 1964, right? Given all that's happened in the last 50 years.

00:05:35.580 You know, we had a two-term black president and that counts for absolutely nothing. We have a generation

00:05:41.520 that's acting like, you know, being on the three-yard line with respect to racism is, you know, a moment

00:05:51.300 of moral emergency, right? So I'm not saying that racism is gone. I'm not saying that there are no

00:05:56.340 ways in which there may be policies that disadvantage people in various groups and we want to untangle all

00:06:07.360 that and respond to all that. But we have made enormous progress and there are just not that many racists

00:06:17.340 out there, right, who want racist outcomes, you know, starkly unequal and unfair outcomes for people.

00:06:24.880 And so to not acknowledge that is deranging. And so now we have a kind of an activist cohort in our

00:06:34.480 society. It's, it's not clear just what percentage of, of American society it is, but it doesn't have to be

00:06:40.720 all that big to completely derail our conversation about these issues. And yeah, so now, you know,

00:06:47.800 defenestrating Thomas Jefferson, um, uh, or anyone else from our, from our history who, who's, you know,

00:06:59.060 obviously, uh, record on race was, was imperfect, uh, to say the least, but still you can't, you can't

00:07:07.820 discount the fact that this is one of the most important people in American history and, uh, still

00:07:14.740 the person who made, you know, an outsized contribution to creating our country. Um, so it's, uh,

00:07:24.060 yeah, this, this particular activism makes no sense. And yeah, it's, it's deeply concerning that

00:07:32.520 we, you know, these are educators. These are people who will be teaching children, uh, almost without

00:07:41.020 fail at this point to, to view the world through the lens of race in a way that, that, you know,

00:07:48.640 arguably was appropriate 50 years ago, but really isn't appropriate now. It's in fact,

00:07:54.840 totally dysfunctional now. I mean, some of the critics have said, this is, this is David Duke's

00:08:02.360 dream realized where everything really is about skin color. It's immutable. It's not overcomable.

00:08:09.980 It makes all the difference in character and how well you can do in society. You know, these,

00:08:16.400 the differences are innate and, um, should dominate anyone's perception of another or just upon

00:08:23.140 first meeting them. And that's where we're going. And I know you've said, I thought you made an

00:08:28.320 interesting statement because you're not big on false claims of victimhood. And you were saying

00:08:33.720 they, they can diminish the social stature of any group, including one that really has been victimized.

00:08:41.280 And so constantly, as you say, you know, we're on, we're on the three yard line with race,

00:08:47.560 constantly pretending that we're not, that we're already, we're still all the way down the playing

00:08:51.480 field can actually set a group back. I mean, it can actually, it's setting back race relations and

00:08:59.520 black people as a group. Yeah. Because it's, it's dishonest, right? It's just, it's not,

00:09:05.340 um, and it also just, it just violates the basic principle that will get us into the end zone.

00:09:12.300 I mean, to, to, to, let's just acknowledge what the goal is here. The goal is to wake up in a world

00:09:19.420 where these superficial differences between people, the skin color, uh, has absolutely no moral or

00:09:27.940 political significance, right? That's, I mean, that, that was certainly MLK's dream and it should

00:09:34.280 be ours, right? And, and activists on this issue and a host of other issues as well are acting like

00:09:42.160 these differences between people are indelible, morally important, uh, politically essential to

00:09:50.580 recognize at every turn and that, that any disparity we see in our society, you know, if we, if we inventory

00:09:58.480 our fortune 500 companies and, and our various professions, we find that there's not a perfect,

00:10:04.320 uh, representation of the general population in all of those places, right? If, if exactly 50%

00:10:12.660 of cardiologists are not women, if exactly 13 to 14% of, of, uh, uh, people in the C-suite at Apple

00:10:22.580 aren't black, right? The only explanation for this is bigotry, right? Now that is just,

00:10:29.740 there are many things wrong with that, but first is that it is almost certainly untrue, right? I mean,

00:10:35.300 at minimum you would need real evidence to make that allegation. And there's so many other

00:10:41.000 explanations that, that, uh, promote themselves here. And it's so the, the dishonesty of it is toxic,

00:10:49.660 uh, not to mention the fact that it's seeing yourself as a victim perpetually and, and locating

00:10:55.100 your, your social power, your, your status in victimhood, which is really the, the algorithm

00:11:01.560 that is running here. Uh, it's just, it's, uh, it's intrinsically divisive, right? I mean,

00:11:07.460 if you're, if you're, if you're politics is based on the politics of identity rather than,

00:11:11.720 than, uh, looking for solutions that benefit everybody, looking for systems that are intrinsically

00:11:18.580 fair, right? You're, it's just, you can't, you can't possibly converge with other people because

00:11:26.440 all you're doing is ramifying your differences. Uh, so you're, you're, you're viewing everything

00:11:31.100 as zero sum in principle. Uh, and it's just, it's, um, yeah, it's, it's regressive. And again,

00:11:38.420 it, it, it doesn't acknowledge any of the progress, progress we've made or the, the principles by which

00:11:44.900 we've made that progress. One of the problems we're having is the complete stifling of conversation

00:11:52.320 on this and the messaging to white people and often white men that you just can't speak.

00:12:01.100 If you're white, you shouldn't speak on the issue of race. If you're a man, you shouldn't speak on

00:12:04.860 the issue of sexism. If you're cis, meaning you identify with the, your biological sex that you

00:12:10.820 were born with, um, you shouldn't speak on the issue of transgender and so on. And it's a really

00:12:16.140 effective way of silencing people in those groups because you're told if you even try to speak out

00:12:22.700 about it, nevermind, speak out critically. If you dare say anything critical of it, um, you've,

00:12:28.900 you've offended just by opening your mouth, you've offended. And I know this summer when we were in

00:12:35.100 the midst of the BLM protests and defund the police cries and all that, you, you were very outspoken in

00:12:42.320 a very, very powerful podcast that I I've listened to a few times. And you made a point up front about

00:12:48.700 saying you, it was a conscious choice not to put on a black scholar, uh, an intellectual to talk to

00:12:57.040 you and to make these points for you with you across from you, because you want to disabuse

00:13:04.420 people of this perception that the color of one's skin matters for a discussion on race or that,

00:13:11.920 you know, your gender has to determine whether you can speak up on trans or et cetera. I thought

00:13:19.240 that was really brave. And I think more of us need to say that. Yeah. I mean, you know, my,

00:13:23.280 obviously my bravery is, is to some degree founded on the fact that I've taken prudent steps to not be

00:13:29.560 cancelable. Right. So in the end, it's, it's not all that much bravery to, to be honest, uh, because I

00:13:35.420 just have, uh, I have, I knew what I wanted to be able to do. And I've, I've taken steps to ensure

00:13:43.600 that I, I, uh, run a fairly low risk of, of, uh, suffering some, you know, fatal error, you know,

00:13:51.180 bit, you know, career wise, uh, for doing it. So, and I mean, as you know, you've had adventures in,

00:13:56.360 in cancellation and it's, you know, I mean, you're an example I've actually spoken about. I mean,

00:14:00.720 someone at the absolute top of media, uh, saying one thing and being hurled from the ramparts for it.

00:14:09.780 Um, and, you know, and I would, I would say, you know, it was a, a malicious framing of,

00:14:15.560 of what you said. Um, and I mean, perhaps we can, we can, I don't know if you want to talk about that,

00:14:21.940 but I think there's a, the underlying problem here is that people want to hold people to the least

00:14:31.060 charitable interpretation of what they've said or done at every turn. And they're really not concerned

00:14:38.320 to know what was actually intended, what was actually going on in their minds or what, or what,

00:14:42.880 what their, their real aims are. Right. So if you can discover that someone has said something

00:14:49.420 that can possibly be construed as racist or sexist or transphobic or whatever it is, um, well then

00:14:57.140 that possible construal is the thing that you, you, you will amplify as an, as an activist or even as

00:15:04.580 a journalist now. And the goal is just complete obliteration of a person's reputation and, and,

00:15:12.720 you know, obvious aim to make them, them unhireable. Uh, and so, so yeah, I mean, I, I've, I saw the

00:15:22.740 writing on the wall there and I have, um, you know, kind of created a platform for myself where I can say

00:15:28.520 more or less anything I want, but yeah, the reality is that if you are a white guy who is talking about,

00:15:34.740 uh, in this case, police violence, uh, against, uh, you know, everyone, but in particular young black

00:15:42.960 men, uh, you are, you're on, you, you, you know, you have to be on the back foot, uh, to, to even think

00:15:51.420 you should be saying something, especially at a moment as fraught as immediate aftermath of the,

00:15:56.900 the George Floyd killing. Um, but the truth is the color of a person's skin has absolutely no

00:16:04.160 relevance to a conversation about the, the, the actual statistics of police violence and, and

00:16:11.240 crime and violence in our society. Uh, and it's, it's, it's bizarre and dysfunctional to think it,

00:16:18.600 it does have relevance there. And, um, you know, we, we have, uh, on that particular point,

00:16:25.340 we're, we are suffering a kind of public hysteria around this topic. I'm not saying that there isn't

00:16:32.000 too much police violence. I'm not saying that many of our cops are poorly trained and we should be

00:16:37.140 hiring, you know, better recruits and training them better. And, and, you know, far from defunding

00:16:41.640 the police, we should, we should give them more funds for, you know, to, to recruit better people

00:16:46.840 and to, and to train them better. Uh, but the flip side of that is the cops have the hardest job in

00:16:52.680 the world practically, right? I mean, they're thrust into situations that are, that are, um,

00:16:57.960 that the public, you know, don't understand how to interpret, right? I mean, we're in a country

00:17:02.620 where there are 400 million guns on the streets. This is not like policing in Japan where you can

00:17:07.580 assume when, when the guy turns around and races to the front seat of his car, he's going to, he's,

00:17:13.840 he's not going to pull out a handgun. In fact, you, you have to assume that he will in this case,

00:17:18.560 right? So cops are in all these situations where they have to make split second decisions about

00:17:24.220 what someone's doing with their hands. And it's, um, you know, yes, they kill a thousand people every

00:17:30.120 year, but they don't kill people, uh, in a way that suggests that there's an epidemic of racist

00:17:37.760 violence perpetrated by racist cops in our society. They're just, that's not what the data show.

00:17:43.740 And yet to say that in the aftermath of George Floyd, um, yeah, that's, you know, I think it

00:17:50.340 was rightly perceived as risky and, you know, many people would have been fired for recording a

00:17:55.160 podcast like that, but, you know, happily, I, I have taken pains to be unfireable.

00:18:00.060 I mean, the, the whole stifling of conversation around COVID first and the, the riots over the

00:18:08.000 summer, black lives matter, the gender stuff. This is really what made me want to get back out there,

00:18:12.780 just get in front of a microphone again, because the more you tell me, I can't say something,

00:18:17.260 the more I want to say it. And I've always been that way. I don't, I, you know, my executive

00:18:20.820 producer, Tom Lowell used to say to me at, at, at Fox, MK, you like to go to the place that hurts.

00:18:27.100 And it was true. And it wasn't, you know, gratuitous. It was because when no one wants to

00:18:33.280 talk about a thing, to me, it becomes ever more important to talk about the thing. There's nothing

00:18:37.740 wrong with talking about the thing. And we've gone completely crazy on this where just talking

00:18:45.780 is a fireable fence, just a fireable offense, just talking about something can get you fired.

00:18:52.720 It's, it isn't right. And it, it scares me that so many people have, forgive the term,

00:18:59.580 bent the knee on that. They, they don't talk anymore. They're afraid.

00:19:04.500 Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is a, um, I mean, it's a, uh, a great inoculation against this

00:19:10.540 comes in, in certain areas of academia. Although I got to imagine those are closing down a little

00:19:17.400 bit now, but, you know, having a background in philosophy, you know, in a philosophy seminar,

00:19:21.360 you know, just as thought experiments, you can talk about anything, right? Cause you're,

00:19:27.180 you're looking, you're probing for the foundations of ethics, right? You're trying to figure out what

00:19:31.300 makes something wrong. You know, if in fact things can truly be wrong in this world, you know, as,

00:19:37.740 as I think they can, uh, you know, in a, in a philosophy seminar, you might say, well, you know,

00:19:42.160 why can't, what is the difference between abortion and infanticide? And, you know, why can't people kill

00:19:48.780 their children if they don't want them anymore? Right. You know, if they do it, you know, within 15 minutes

00:19:53.760 of birth, right. If abortion is, is legal. I mean, so these are the kinds of things, sentences you

00:19:59.660 would speak in a room filled with, with people searching to understand ethics. And yet now one

00:20:09.100 would fear that somebody would just take that quote out of context and say, well, look at this maniac.

00:20:16.360 He doesn't understand why you can't kill babies. Right. Um, and it's, we need to be able to speak

00:20:23.060 without being paranoid. Uh, and we need our, we need our actual intentions to matter. I mean, it's,

00:20:31.480 it's, it's not that hard to figure out if somebody is actually racist and racist in a way that that

00:20:38.960 should matter. Right. Or actually sexist, you know, sexist in a way that should matter. And people don't

00:20:45.940 tend to conceal this stuff. Right. And, and it's, and people should be held accountable for what

00:20:51.600 they really are trying to do to the world. Right. So it's the fact that a, a bad joke or,

00:20:59.460 or something that can be misunderstood or a, or an honest question of confusion, um, get, can get

00:21:06.440 spun into, uh, a, a career ending reputation canceling offense. That's, uh, I mean, maybe that

00:21:16.780 was always possible in some way, but it does seem genuinely new in a way that it achieved scale based

00:21:23.200 on, you know, our, our, our new, uh, technology. I mean, just social media has, has leveraged this

00:21:30.320 into something that's, that's deeply, uh, unhealthy for us as a society. And, and, uh, we have to find

00:21:37.300 some way to pull back. Well, I know you've said all we have between us and the total breakdown of

00:21:43.820 civilization is successful conversations. That's, and we're on the brink, but it made me think because,

00:21:51.200 you know, having been in media for a long time, I do wonder whether these conversations are working.

00:21:58.140 The ones that we were having before the complete shutdown of all of them and even the ones that

00:22:04.280 we're starting to have now, you know, it's, there've been studies that say people don't want to

00:22:09.060 hear opposing ideas that they really, they try to avoid listening to them. That's why we have Fox

00:22:14.300 news and CNN and MSNBC on the other side. People go there for confirmation bias and just to feel good

00:22:20.480 about themselves. It's like hearing the sweet nothings about how right you are. And I really wonder

00:22:26.440 whether we've leaned so far into that, that conversation's over, it's canceled conversations

00:22:33.380 canceled. Yeah. Well, so I do think conversation is the only tool we have to ensure that 8 billion

00:22:42.500 of us can collaborate in an open-ended way. I mean, is, is the human project truly open-ended? You know,

00:22:50.620 is it possible that we're going to get through this century and into the next million years of

00:22:57.720 conscious life, you know, that, that is directly descended from who we are now, you know, whether

00:23:06.760 we will be recognizably human at that point is certainly an open question, but you know, is,

00:23:13.360 is, is this project doomed and is it doomed in the near term or are we going to, to, to thrive in

00:23:21.860 some truly open-ended way? I think conversation is really the, the whole story that will decide

00:23:30.840 whether, you know, which future we, we land in here, because it is the only thing that allows us to

00:23:38.220 modify the behavior of perfect strangers without violence, right? We have a choice between conversation

00:23:47.400 and violence and in all its forms coercion, right? So, you know, laws are also a form of violence in

00:23:53.780 the, in the end, you know, if we pass a law against you doing or saying certain things, well, what

00:24:00.260 happens when you break that law? I mean, people show up to your house with guns and you know, if you do

00:24:05.860 the wrong thing with your hands, you might get shot, right? So it's, it's, um, we have, we have our

00:24:12.660 ability to persuade one another based on common principles of reasoning and, and appeal to facts

00:24:20.720 that can be, you know, mutually appreciated, uh, or we have force and, uh, we should be very slow to

00:24:29.600 make an appeal to force for obvious reasons. Uh, so we have to get better at,

00:24:35.860 speaking to one another about difficult issues and we appear to be getting worse at it. And that's,

00:24:42.020 and we, and we appear to have crafted a, an information ecosystem in the media and social

00:24:48.040 media now that is, uh, has all of the signs of being a, a psychological experiment to which no one

00:24:55.780 consented, uh, whose purpose is to see how crazy it can make us, right? I mean, we, we, we, we're now in,

00:25:02.560 you know, mutually canceling and irreconcilable, uh, echo chambers. And there are many of them.

00:25:11.020 And, you know, I mean, just to look at, you know, what's happening now currently in our politics

00:25:14.620 around the election and, you know, what has been happening four years, uh, under Trump,

00:25:19.900 we're seeing a, a fragmentation of media and social media. Uh, and, you know, you, you know,

00:25:28.640 in the case of social media, we've built a built platforms that, that, you know, have been maliciously

00:25:33.720 gamed, you know, where the, where the echo chamber effect can be accentuated by the very business

00:25:39.060 model. Um, so it really is, uh, something that we have to get straight. And I think the prospect of

00:25:47.280 us just maintaining this particular course where we're this fragmented, where it's, where it's this

00:25:53.520 difficult to talk about the most important things that face us, you know, you know, a pandemic,

00:25:59.540 right? We can't even figure out how to talk to one another about what, what we should do in the face

00:26:05.540 of a pandemic, right? And that's, um, and, and trust in our institutions has eroded, right? And for,

00:26:13.160 for obvious reasons, but for reasons that we have to figure out how to nullify, right? So you just want

00:26:18.580 to take something that will be, uh, I would imagine dear to the hearts of many of your listeners,

00:26:24.320 I mean, the hypocrisy of public health officials, right? Where they castigate people protesting lockdown

00:26:32.500 as being, you know, murderously irresponsible for having gone out in public without masks, uh, or,

00:26:39.800 or gone out in large groups at all, uh, to express their, their political opinions. You know,

00:26:46.540 the way that flipped when the protests were for black lives matter, and you have the same public

00:26:52.420 health officials in many cases by the, I think by the thousand signing open letters in support of,

00:26:59.340 uh, these protests, which, you know, from an epidemiological perspective were just as crazy.

00:27:05.420 In fact, probably far crazier than any of the, the protests that were happening, uh, in protest over the,

00:27:11.700 over lockdown. Um, yeah, it harms the, the, the stature of our most important, uh, organs of

00:27:23.620 information in a pandemic, right? If science is going to be that politicized, uh, it's easy to see

00:27:31.820 how trust breaks down. More with Sam in just one second, but first let's talk bloomsy box. Are you

00:27:37.600 still struggling with what to buy your mom or your family member, your long lost friend for the

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00:28:55.180 for 15% off at bloomsy box.com. There is a difference between the way the New York times

00:29:08.420 tries to get its facts straight, even when it fails, then something like Breitbart or Fox news or,

00:29:15.900 or, um, you know, any, any organ of, of, uh, uh, you know, I would say pseudo news on the right.

00:29:24.320 And that, that asymmetry is something that, you know, we have to figure out how to correct,

00:29:29.640 uh, because it's, it's, um, you know, it's, it's shattering our society.

00:29:35.460 Would you, I'm just curious, would you, do you think CNN and MSNBC are in the New York times camp?

00:29:42.900 No, no, I think they're worse. I think they're obviously worse. Most of the time. MSNBC is,

00:29:48.560 is obviously worse. CNN is, is often worse. Um, and it's, yeah, I mean, I find them both more or

00:29:57.700 less unwatchable now. I mean, I never watched MSNBC, frankly, but, um, but I think we have to be

00:30:06.680 honest about why this is because I, so I'm sure, you know, my opinion of Trump. Um, but I think,

00:30:15.880 I think Trump really is as, um, I mean, I think it is true to say that he is the most dishonest

00:30:25.340 and corrupt person who has, has, who has appeared in, in public life, in our country,

00:30:32.720 in our lifetime. I think that is a fact about him. This is not, I don't think that's just my

00:30:37.920 opinion. I don't think it's, I don't think this is really debatable. I mean, I think it's like saying

00:30:42.960 he's got a, you know, a vaguely orange hue to his skin or, you know, fairly colorful hair. Uh, I mean,

00:30:49.820 these are, these are, these are, these are facts about him that you can observe based on being able

00:30:54.920 to observe him for now decades, right? I'm not talking just about the last four years. I think

00:31:00.720 he is, he is a, um, he's not a normal politician. He's not a normal person in this specific regard and

00:31:09.380 his, his level of dishonesty and his level of, of selfishness, I mean, his, the malignancy of his

00:31:17.020 self concern, right? And everything gets sucked into that, that kind of moral black hole around

00:31:27.200 him, right? And he, and he attracts people into his orbit who will put up with that, right? You know,

00:31:33.500 people who are for their own reasons are willing to, who don't view that as the, the, the moral and

00:31:43.040 political abomination that, that it, that it actually is. And the, the media has had to figure

00:31:48.420 out how to respond to this. And, uh, you know, I would be the first to say that they've done a

00:31:54.540 terrible job. Um, and it has been deranging for them, right? And he said, because when they see that

00:32:00.980 he's, you know, he, he functions by a very different physics, you know, your reputation, like he's managed

00:32:06.200 to dissect out a, a kind of, you know, a personality cult within our society.

00:32:13.940 Now I got to stop you. I got a couple of thoughts. Um, I would suggest to you that one of the reasons

00:32:18.340 you don't see Hillary Clinton as in the running for most dishonest, corrupt politician ever is

00:32:23.640 because in part, the way the media didn't cover that they run cover for their favorite Democrats.

00:32:30.220 Like we saw with the Hunter Biden story, which has now come out as confirmed. The FBI has been

00:32:35.120 looking into him reportedly looking into foreign dealings, possible money laundering, a story that

00:32:40.660 Twitter and Facebook and the other media outlets wouldn't even touch. We were told it was untrue.

00:32:47.200 We were told it was a smear. It was an October surprise, not based in fact. Well, guess what?

00:32:51.840 That's not true. And Hillary Clinton at the time, she wasn't the most beloved democratic candidate,

00:32:56.640 but once it was her versus Trump, they were all in on protecting her stories about the Clinton

00:33:01.700 foundation. She lied every two minutes, but we didn't have a lie ticker going on her because the

00:33:09.060 media wasn't interested in doing that. Cheryl Atkinson was just on talking about that, about

00:33:12.840 this reporter who was telling her, we calculated out how many times Trump lies. And this is the number

00:33:17.460 of lies per minute. And she said, how many for Hillary? This is when they were running against each

00:33:21.260 other. And they said, Oh, we didn't have the time or the staff to do that. Well, it might be

00:33:25.820 interesting. She's, she's not, she doesn't have an adult relationship with the truth either. I

00:33:29.740 don't, I don't argue that, that Trump is truthful, not for one second. And I understand he may be in

00:33:36.460 a special category, but he may not be as far ahead of people like Hillary as you think.

00:33:42.780 No, I mean, I would definitely dispute that. Well, first I will say you're not going to find

00:33:46.380 much of a defense of Hillary Clinton or the Clintons as a couple in me. I mean, I just, I, you know,

00:33:53.800 I completely get why people were allergic to her and her candidacy. Um, and it was a lesser of two

00:34:02.700 evils, you know, choice from my point of view, but it was, it was much lesser for, for a host of

00:34:09.160 reasons, not just to this, this difference in, in dishonesty and, and personal corruption. Uh, but it's

00:34:17.880 just, I mean, the, the, the, or the ordinary range of lying and self-dealing and, and, um, you know,

00:34:29.500 perverse incentives and all the stuff we, we recognize in, in many, if not most politicians,

00:34:36.520 we have a sense of the general shape of that. Right. And I, you know, I, I, I get that if you

00:34:43.980 scratched the surface on, on most of the people in power and then certainly most of the people who

00:34:48.280 seek the office, right. I mean, it is kind of, it's a self-selecting group and there, there are

00:34:54.020 people, you know, who are in this game for the wrong reasons. And there, and there's just, you know,

00:34:59.820 many of the, the incentives are perverse and yet it's not glamorous, right. It's, it's, it's hard to

00:35:05.140 be idealistic about many of these people. And I would say the Clintons were, um, especially cynical

00:35:13.360 and, and yes, there's a lot of dishonesty that you can find in their, in their backstories. Um,

00:35:21.020 but it's just, it's, you know, Trump is orders of magnitude worse. I mean, he, he's done literally

00:35:30.180 hundreds of things, any one of which would have destroyed the political prospects of any other

00:35:37.840 normal politician. Well, that's true. But what I'm saying to you is that when you say we have a

00:35:43.240 sense of what these politicians were and how far, you know, down the dishonesty lane they,

00:35:48.620 they were, I'm, I'm just positing to you that you should put an asterisk there because I think the

00:35:55.320 media has exposed itself during the Trump era. And I think they have gone nuts. They've, they've taken

00:36:00.600 their dishonesty to a new level because they are deranged by him, but their bias has always been

00:36:05.800 there. And I do think it's worthwhile for people to stop and ask themselves how they've been

00:36:12.700 manipulated, how their perception of a politician like Hillary or Barack Obama was manipulated by a,

00:36:19.180 by the glowing coverage they received in general from outlets like the New York times. And to your

00:36:25.260 second point that you were making earlier about when I asked you about CNN and MSNBC,

00:36:28.720 they don't get a pass for, you know, well, they, they're nuts, but he drove them to it. Well,

00:36:35.560 too bad. That doesn't, you know, some of us had a very difficult time with Trump and some of us were

00:36:41.920 not huge fans of his for personal reasons. Right. But you can get past that if you're a strong person

00:36:48.600 and you're an ethical person, you understand what the job of a journalist is, which is not to make it

00:36:54.040 about yourself. And what we saw here with, with CNN and MSNBC was not a couple of journalists fell,

00:37:01.000 you know, like Jim Acosta, who used to be a straight news guy. He fell. He, he just went

00:37:05.040 totally partisan, got the derangement syndrome, couldn't be relied upon for truth anymore.

00:37:10.000 They all went down. All of them. I would like, it was shocking to me to see somebody like Anderson

00:37:16.780 Cooper, um, sacrifice his credibility because of what appeared to be his inability to see Trump in

00:37:23.660 any way that approached fair. Um, so I don't, you know, you, I, I, I felt like you may, may have been

00:37:30.060 sort of trying to explain their surrender to their nonstop attacks on him by, well, he drove them to

00:37:36.660 it. They drove themselves to it. I would just say that the, the asymmetry here really is difficult to

00:37:43.260 navigate. So, I mean, for instance, just to take the Hillary Clinton coverage, I think the media,

00:37:51.060 uh, is rightly, uh, concerned that they got Trump elected, right? I mean, they, first of all,

00:38:00.160 they gave Trump something, some insane ratio of coverage. And there's something like 20 times

00:38:07.340 the amount of coverage that they gave. I can't remember if that was, that was for Clinton or for

00:38:12.080 Bernie Sanders, but there's some, there's some comparison between the amount of airtime Trump got,

00:38:15.860 you know, in 2016. It was the other GOP candidates in the primary. Okay. So, so it's just,

00:38:21.740 they did that, right. And they, they have good reason to worry whether that was counterproductive

00:38:28.860 given what they wanted to happen, uh, in the election. Uh, and also it's, I think it's fairly

00:38:35.960 well established at this point that the, the Comey, uh, you know, reactivation of, of the email,

00:38:43.420 uh, investigation, whatever it was 11 days before the election in 2016, the coverage of that and

00:38:51.520 the sort of the, the, the, the scrupulosity of that moment, both from the FBI side and from the

00:38:57.320 press's side, like, Oh yeah, we really got to talk about this now from, you know, you know,

00:39:01.620 yet another 24 hour news cycle when there's only 10 days left left. Let's talk about Hillary Clinton's

00:39:07.460 emails. They rightly think that that probably cost her the election right now. Obviously there are

00:39:13.980 many other things that, you know, cost her the election. She was a terrible candidate and

00:39:18.100 she didn't go to Wisconsin. Yeah. You, I mean, you might, yeah, you could say that her

00:39:22.160 election was, was overdetermined, but when the people who were tracking the polls in those last

00:39:27.980 days of the campaign just saw the, the, the direct effect, or at least now claim to have seen the

00:39:33.560 direct effect of, of that coverage. So, so it's given that history. Yeah. What do you do with a

00:39:41.080 Hunter Biden story? Right. It's a hard problem. You know, I, and because it's, it's, it's not clear.

00:39:47.840 It isn't hard. You're so much more forgiving of these people than I am. First of all, it was very

00:39:52.640 obvious that they were giving Trump too much free airtime. Even to me, I was a person responsible

00:39:58.160 for putting points on the board when it came to ratings during the Trump rise, the GOP primary and

00:40:02.560 thereafter. And this is in my book, but we, we had many, a meeting, my executive producer, my team

00:40:08.060 and I did about the need to stop, to pull ourselves away from the crack cocaine. You know, like Trump

00:40:15.680 was amazing television. Every time you put him on television, the ratings soared, but it wasn't fair

00:40:20.800 because Scott Walker was terrible television and incredibly boring to watch. I like him. I like him

00:40:27.040 just for the record, but he is not a dynamic television personality and it was totally unfair.

00:40:32.240 What we were doing. So even though we wanted the crack cocaine, we didn't snort it, right? We,

00:40:37.260 we made a conscious decision to try to get ratings the old fashioned way, which was interesting debate

00:40:41.380 and reporting the news in an entertaining way, but not, not putting our thumb on the scale.

00:40:45.640 They did it intentionally. They knew what they were doing. Jeff Zucker knew what he was doing.

00:40:49.980 Noah Oppenheim knew what he was doing on the today show, allowing Trump to phone in,

00:40:53.460 to do phoners as a presidential candidate when nobody else would have been afforded that. Right.

00:40:57.180 Um, they did it for ratings. They sold their souls out for numbers, Joe and Mika too. They kissed

00:41:03.420 Trump's ass when he was running. Why? Because their numbers would soar on a show that was not doing

00:41:08.000 well. So I, that I don't, I don't forgive them one bit of that. In other words, I don't allow them

00:41:13.060 to use that to justify their overcompensation and trying to ruin him every moment of his presidency.

00:41:18.620 They, they, they made, made their bed and they needed to lie in it. And the Hunter Biden story

00:41:23.140 was very clearly legitimate. He, he had never denied it. There was an FBI subpoena that was

00:41:31.360 verifiable. There were third party witnesses who had come forward to say, I participated in this.

00:41:36.980 And let me tell you about it. Whose credibility was not assailable. They just didn't want to do it.

00:41:43.160 They didn't want to do anything that could hurt Biden.

00:41:46.360 Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, I understand it. I mean, you know, it's, you know, I've always been,

00:41:51.980 uh, I've always made an effort to be fair in my criticism of Trump because I do, I do think it's,

00:42:00.940 I mean, I think intellectual honesty is the, the master value here. And I think, I think you,

00:42:06.000 there's, if you think he's racist, well then, you know, argue on, based on real evidence that he's

00:42:11.640 racist and not pseudo evidence. Right. And I, and I think it's, you know, and this is true for

00:42:17.040 anything else you might want to allege about him. Um, but I, I think that, you know, the worst

00:42:23.640 problem with him beyond anything else that has, that he's done or tried to do is, uh, the way in

00:42:32.820 which our, our trust in our institutions and, and a whole style of, of speaking and thinking about

00:42:40.620 institutions, uh, has, has just fully eroded. I mean, we're just, you know, it seems that it

00:42:48.220 seems that half the country thinks we don't need institutions anymore. Right. Now that we can just,

00:42:52.820 let me ask you about that, but let me ask you about this. So I, I've been following this too,

00:42:56.140 and I've been experiencing it myself as a citizen, to some extent, not, not fully, but to some extent,

00:43:02.440 right. Because take, take Comey and the FBI. I defended Jim Comey. I thought he was a man of honor.

00:43:08.620 Um, the whole story of Robert Mueller and Comey and, you know, having each other's backs and

00:43:12.780 protecting each other and whatever the ethical, uh, quandaries they faced and rose above.

00:43:18.220 I defended him. And now I see him as a partisan hack. I really do. I've completely changed on him.

00:43:23.780 I defended the FBI. I know a lot of these FBI agents. I, I tend to defer to law enforcement.

00:43:28.840 I have law enforcement in my family. And I think a lot of women are deferential to law enforcement for

00:43:33.340 reasons having to do with nonstop crimes being played on the evening news as we were growing up,

00:43:37.820 but that's just my armchair theory. Anyway. Um, then I saw the, the Peter Strzok emails and the

00:43:45.020 other emails coming out from the FBI and how partisan they were and how determined they were to

00:43:48.280 bring down Trump. And I thought, maybe I have been too deferential. Maybe Trump kicking these tires

00:43:56.600 is not such a bad thing. Maybe we have been too trusting in these institutions. And of course,

00:44:02.600 we've discussed media and how people were trusting media in a way they shouldn't have been. Um,

00:44:08.340 I don't, I don't, I agree. It's gone too far. I don't think you throw out the baby with the

00:44:13.360 bathwater, right? I think we're sort of now at the point where we trust no one and we've become

00:44:17.980 conspiratorial and things are getting weird. There's becoming like a cult, like love for Trump

00:44:26.080 that we're in, which he looks deified, that's concerning. And therefore his offhanded need to

00:44:33.280 attack every institution that says something bad about him or does something he doesn't like

00:44:37.060 or person, you know, governor Kemp of Georgia, who's his fan is, it isn't healthy. I see all of

00:44:43.900 that, but how, how do you ascribe, you know, how do you deal with those revelations of dishonesty,

00:44:51.900 um, versus maintaining a country in which we do have to trust institutions and move forward?

00:44:58.800 Well, I just think you have to put them in their proper perspective, right? So again, what you,

00:45:04.620 you drill down on anything and you start reading people's private emails or emails they thought

00:45:09.300 were going to be private, you start reading their texts. Yes, there's no question you're going to

00:45:14.280 find things that, that, you know, are embarrassing and, and are all too human. Uh, and that's totally

00:45:24.800 understandable. I mean, these, these things weren't intended for public consumption, right? So, you know,

00:45:29.680 a hack of the DNC or, or, uh, you know, subpoenaing people's text messages when you, when you're

00:45:36.580 investigating, you know, anyone that, you know, attorneys or members of the FBI, yet you'll, you'll

00:45:41.960 find evidence of bias and all of that. Right. So, but that, no one's surprised by that. What people

00:45:46.760 should be surprised by is, uh, you know, to take one institution institution in particular,

00:45:52.700 that you are under an election, um, and all the systems that support it. And we, we should be

00:45:58.200 surprised that we have a sitting president who in the run-up to the election would not commit to a

00:46:06.180 peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. And then on election night with millions of

00:46:11.980 votes still coming in, claimed to have won, right. And demanded that the voting be stopped,

00:46:17.620 right. Whether the ballots, you know, the ballot counting stop, um, that just, just that, if you

00:46:24.040 just, just make a little documentary about that moment and what it says about where we've come and

00:46:32.300 the, the divergent reactions to that in our society, right. The fact that we had something like half of

00:46:40.300 the society that simply didn't care this was happening, or they had some construal of it,

00:46:45.920 where this is all, this is, this is not only benign, this is good, right. He's, he's disrupting

00:46:52.680 everything now. Now he's disrupting our expectations about the peaceful transfer of power and, and, uh,

00:46:59.300 the integrity of our elections, right. He's calling a fraud on an election that, that, that is in

00:47:04.580 process, you know, where we haven't seen any evidence of fraud yet. Right. He, he called the

00:47:09.820 election he won in 2016 fraudulent. Um, and that's, you know, and this should be the lens

00:47:16.380 through which we look at everything that has happened subsequently in the last month and a

00:47:20.840 half or so, right. It's, it's, it's not that if you don't go looking for fraud, you'll never find

00:47:27.340 it. Of course, that there's, there's going to be some ambient level of election fraud that there

00:47:32.120 will be, and there'll be this, there'll be crazy behavior. Um, and if you put yourself in a

00:47:37.600 position to just look for crazy behavior, you will find it. But the question is, can you find it at a

00:47:43.320 scale, uh, that reveals this election to be, uh, completely fraudulent? Uh, you know, there's no

00:47:51.360 evidence for that at the moment. No, I get it. I get it. But I have to say, I think that I look at

00:47:55.060 the media who's that's, that's how we're learning about the substance of these election fraud claims,

00:47:59.580 right? We trust, we need to trust them to tell us what has he filed? What is the court saying?

00:48:04.780 Does he have the proof? It's, it's the same as those doctors who justified the BLM protests

00:48:11.960 coming out now telling us to stay inside and not go shoulder to shoulder. We're looking at them

00:48:17.720 saying, I don't believe you anymore. You already sacrificed your credibility. I don't know who to

00:48:23.060 believe, but when, when confused with who to believe people do revert to tribalism. They go to

00:48:29.940 the person who's wearing their team Jersey. And I think that's why a lot of these Republicans

00:48:33.980 who have lost all trust in media are believing Trump, even though I've said on this show many

00:48:40.080 times, I don't think any of his claims are robust. I've, there's been a couple his, the last one he

00:48:44.560 filed, um, in the state of Georgia that challenged like the failure to match up the signatures and how

00:48:50.080 many votes were thrown out versus in prior elections. And it went down this year, even though the vote was

00:48:53.920 five times higher by mail, blah, blah, blah. You could, you could make an argument on, on a couple

00:48:58.520 of them, right? So we're trying to give him his due without losing touch with reality. But I

00:49:03.500 completely understand why people that it's gone. Their, their trust in the, in the information

00:49:09.920 deliverers is gone. And just for the record, the FBI thing was not just the Peter struck emails,

00:49:14.240 but as you know, an FBI agent pleaded guilty for doctoring a subpoena. They got subpoenas in the,

00:49:19.900 in the case against Trump from the FISA court by using the, the, um, the dossier, which had been

00:49:26.300 discredited and they knew it wasn't true. Like there were a lot of things that were exposed.

00:49:30.860 Why? Because Trump fought back and he made outlandish claims at the time that weren't true

00:49:36.100 in defending himself, but he wasn't guilty. That was the truth at the end of the day. And,

00:49:41.160 and same thing with impeachment. There's just been so many overreaches in order to destroy him

00:49:45.760 that in essence, they've endowed him with the credibility to come out and challenge anything.

00:49:52.300 I'm not, I don't excuse Trump for throwing wild claims around. I'm just in the way you're trying

00:49:57.060 to explain the media's distorted minefield when it comes to Trump. I'm trying to explain why he now

00:50:02.340 has this ultimate credibility with all these folks, because the other side is just, it's collapsed.

00:50:07.860 The, the information deliverers have collapsed and it matters.

00:50:11.720 Yeah. Well, it does matter. It hasn't completely collapsed. And I think people need to be sensitive

00:50:16.560 to, to, uh, the difference between, you know, plausible interpretations of events and, you know,

00:50:26.580 completely unprincipled conspiratorial, you know, tinfoil hat, crazy interpretation of events. And,

00:50:32.900 and there, there, there are reasons why we have this, this category of conspiracy theories that,

00:50:38.620 that doesn't subsume all of our thinking about everything all the time. Right. And there,

00:50:44.040 there's a reason why there's a stigma associated with conspiracy thinking because it, it, it reliably

00:50:51.680 manufactures errors, right. It rests on, on not acknowledging, uh, the power of incentives,

00:50:59.860 right. And so to take the, you know, the case of the, the election fraud, uh, conspiracy right now,

00:51:05.220 again, I'm not saying there isn't some level of fraud, but there are many reasons to think that

00:51:08.900 whatever level of fraud there is, it almost certainly happens on both sides in the election,

00:51:14.640 right. And it's, there's not a lot of incentive for individuals to commit fraud and, and, and doesn't,

00:51:21.080 there doesn't seem to be the apparatus to allow us to really commit it at scale, uh, across multiple

00:51:27.160 states. Um, and you know, that's a good thing. I mean, obviously we want to, we want an election

00:51:32.640 system that we can be confident in and that, and that is, uh, designed in a way to truly minimize

00:51:37.960 fraud and error. And we have to, this is a project we, we need to, to engage, uh, if for no other

00:51:44.920 reason than to, to restore confidence in, in our election system. But the, the reality is, is that

00:51:51.000 all of this is happening in a context where many of the people in power, right. The governors,

00:51:56.820 the secretaries of state, the legislators, the election officials, the judges who have to hear

00:52:02.880 these cases, many of them are lifelong Republicans, right? Many of them, many of them surely voted for

00:52:08.960 Trump in this election. And so you have to, to, to, you're arguing to be really conspiratorial about

00:52:15.900 this. You're arguing that these people are somehow incentivized to risk going to prison in order to

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00:53:22.480 first, we want to bring you this feature we call Sound Up, where we talk about some of the sound

00:53:26.500 bites making the news that we think are interesting and want to share with you. And today, we are going

00:53:31.720 to talk about Hunter Biden. Remember old Hunter Biden? If not, you could be excused since it was a

00:53:38.460 story that was totally buried by the mainstream media. CNN, Politico, others reported last week

00:53:44.700 that Joe Biden's son is being investigated by the FBI. His taxes, his dealing with China,

00:53:51.720 money laundering, and more. We don't know how deep this goes, but it doesn't sound good.

00:53:57.080 The story has a lot of the same hallmarks as the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden

00:54:02.140 in October. Remember that? It was a big scoop. It was about what was on the Hunter Biden laptop.

00:54:08.200 That story, however, which was published before the election, was suppressed, totally censored by

00:54:15.540 Twitter, Facebook, and other social outlets. Basically, no one wanted to go with this. It

00:54:19.260 wasn't just social. It was print magazines and print newspapers and television. Nobody wanted to

00:54:24.120 touch this thing. They decided it was not to be discussed. And they said it was because it was

00:54:29.200 unreliable. But the truth is more likely that it was bad for Joe Biden. Anything bad for Joe Biden has

00:54:34.520 to be suppressed, according to the media. So how did the media treat the story at that time prior to

00:54:40.200 the election? Listen to some MSNBC highlights. Watch for President Trump to go after former Vice

00:54:46.120 President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and unverified emails about his business dealings,

00:54:51.300 a story that many intelligence experts say has all the hallmarks of a foreign interference campaign.

00:54:56.760 When there is a New York Post article that is false,

00:54:59.760 it's much better for Twitter to let people read the New York Post article and sit there and laugh

00:55:07.840 at the hokey story of a computer repairman looking at a computer going, this sure does look suspicious

00:55:14.600 to me. I'm going to call Rudy Giuliani. Let that out. OK, because people read this story and then

00:55:23.380 they'll go, this is really one of the stupidest October surprises I've ever seen before. What did

00:55:29.740 he have? X-ray vision? Oh, my God. Why? Why when they're trying to portray a dumb person, do they

00:55:35.700 always put on a Southern accent? It's so irritating, honestly. And then they're like, me, an elite? Oh,

00:55:42.240 wait, I love being an elite. Yes, I am. I am. Screw everybody else. Anyway, so that was Morning Joe.

00:55:48.260 Here's Christiane Amanpour at CNN, who seems to forget the role of a journalist.

00:55:52.860 As you know perfectly well, I'm a journalist and a reporter and I follow the facts and there has

00:55:58.180 never been any issues in terms of corruption. Now, let me ask you this. Yesterday, the FBI-

00:56:04.100 Wait, wait, wait, wait. The FBI- How do you know that?

00:56:07.140 I'm talking about reporting and any evidence. I'm talking to you now-

00:56:12.380 OK, I would love if you guys would start doing that digging and start doing that verification.

00:56:16.420 No, we're not going to do your work for you. I want to ask you a question.

00:56:20.640 There's no reports.

00:56:22.860 So we can't report on it. Why were there no reports again? Oh, because it was buried by

00:56:27.140 people like you who just decided without investigating it that it was untrue. Well,

00:56:31.120 guess what? The FBI has been investigating it. And frankly, it looks like they've been

00:56:35.480 investigating it for a long, long time because in order to get the subpoena to get that Hunter

00:56:40.020 Biden laptop from the legally blind guy who was repairing it. Remember, Hunter left his laptop there

00:56:46.080 and he never went back. And finally, the FBI came in and got it. That was back in December of 19,

00:56:52.920 December of 19. So for the FBI to have gotten that, it suggested that they had an open investigation on

00:56:57.540 Hunter Biden. That's how the FBI can't just like randomly throw out subpoenas back in December of

00:57:02.580 19, which they would have known had they bothered to look at it at all, at all. But no, it was the New

00:57:07.940 York Post. That's a Rupert Murdoch publication. So this has got to be a lie. And, you know, Jack at

00:57:14.260 Twitter, who's got some far left guy deciding what gets censored, spoke out and said, no, we're not

00:57:19.020 going to do it. And so the media lemmings followed. And now it turns out it's a very big story. And if

00:57:24.740 it were Republican, they'd be treating it like it were white hot. So now fear not. Now they're on it.

00:57:31.380 They got Politico. They got CNN. They are on it now that Joe Biden appears to be headed to the White

00:57:36.880 House. Not surprising. Back to Sam.

00:57:43.280 I've been thinking about it when it comes to race and we've been talking about it on the show when it

00:57:46.480 comes to gender. And the reason the gender thing is important is because the scientific world has

00:57:53.220 collapsed, too. Right. Like science is done and you're not allowed to say that there are only two

00:57:59.420 genders and there's only two biological sexes and you're not allowed to question whether it might

00:58:04.680 not be healthy to put a girl who suddenly at age 14 for the first time says she might actually be a

00:58:11.260 boy on puberty blockers or cross sex hormones or allow her to get, quote, top surgery before she's

00:58:18.000 even reached her 18th birthday because that's not allowed. So you go to a scientist, you go to a

00:58:22.620 psychiatrist to check out whether that's true for your daughter. And the standard of care is for him to

00:58:27.860 just affirm, yes, you're trans, you're trans, you're trans. These are the standards of care.

00:58:32.200 It drives me insane. And I know you're a neuroscientist. We had Deborah Sell on the

00:58:36.100 program talking about how she left the field. She's now a journalist covering that field because

00:58:40.340 she didn't think she could say it was scientifically true. I feel like people feel they need to fight

00:58:45.820 back. You know, if Biden gets in there, we're going to see the return and the emboldened

00:58:49.320 nature of all of this. No one's going to shut them down. You've got people like you, Sam,

00:58:54.400 who speak honestly about the dicey issues. You're obviously a, you know, a Democrat, a liberal.

00:59:01.240 But you speak honestly about those issues. But so few people do that people are getting hurt now

00:59:06.540 in the scientific field. They're getting hurt. What do you make of that?

00:59:09.840 Yeah, well, a few things here. One is scientists are just people, right? And not everything they do

00:59:15.440 is science. So, you know, you have scientists who express their opinions on many topics,

00:59:21.140 you know, as I have here on many topics. And it's not, you know, there's no guarantee that

00:59:28.280 what they're saying is, you know, scientifically defensible or convergent with what they would say

00:59:35.240 when they have to put their scientist hat on. And yes, I would agree with you that it is

00:59:41.920 very costly to the reputation of science and any specific institution, you know, scientific journals

00:59:50.860 when they express opinions that are at minimum, you know, highly debatable in terms of their,

01:00:02.060 you know, ethical integrity and connection to science. And it's wrapped up in the mantle of,

01:00:10.080 you know, this is now a scientific opinion, right? So that's, that's a problem. And there,

01:00:15.920 you know, there are many issues, you know, some of which you just raised where

01:00:20.120 they're just, they're, they're fraught issues for a reason. It's hard to know what to do about

01:00:26.420 certain things. I mean, you take the transgender issue, right? I have no doubt that transgenderism

01:00:32.540 is a real phenomenon, right? It's not just made up. It's not just a product of culture.

01:00:39.500 It's not just a, a social contagion, but is there a degree of social contagion riding on top

01:00:47.440 of a real phenomenon that we have to worry about? I mean, specifically with the issue you,

01:00:52.740 you mentioned, I'm sure, I think you're probably referencing Abigail Schreier's book

01:00:57.540 there. And just, you know, just among girls transitioning to, to being boys or wanting to,

01:01:04.940 um, yeah, that's, that has to be discussable, right? And, you know, as her efforts to get,

01:01:13.020 you know, her side of this discussion out have shown, it's, it's very hard to discuss,

01:01:17.960 right? There are people who want to, to cancel her over this. And, you know, somebody like JK Rowling,

01:01:23.880 you know, gets, uh, you know, uh, at least attempted, there's an attempted cancellation of

01:01:29.880 her, um, based on something absolutely benign. She said about, you know, the trade-offs between

01:01:36.680 women's rights and trans rights. And there were, there are trade-offs there. And it's just, there

01:01:40.980 are, there are moments that are hard to navigate based on, uh, appeals to, you know, the primacy of

01:01:48.560 identity, uh, around those issues. And, um, you know, when she was objecting to the corruption of

01:01:54.040 language where we can't talk about women anymore, we have to talk about, about people who men's

01:01:58.780 straight, um, you know, it, it is in fact true to say that if she were not this, you know, billion

01:02:05.940 dollar colossus of a writer, she probably would have had her career ruined over the, the absolutely

01:02:12.020 anodyne thing she said about trans issues there. I mean, this is, there's, there's no evidence at

01:02:18.820 all that she's remotely bigoted against trans people. Um, so yeah, it, it's a, um, the, the stuff

01:02:28.340 is hard to talk about. And the only thing we can appeal to really, if this is going to work is a good

01:02:35.320 faith, uh, engagement with facts and arguments and let the, let the best arguments and the,

01:02:43.300 and the most searching, honest engagement with facts win. I heard John McWhorter on your show

01:02:49.160 saying, uh, he believes these sort of woke, wokesters are in good faith, that they think

01:02:55.300 they're doing good. They're going to help you understand, you know, how racist you are, how

01:03:00.000 transphobic you are, but he also said you, they, they're not persuadable. The only answer is to

01:03:06.720 fight them. Do you agree with that? Yeah. Well, I think, and fight by, by which he meant in most

01:03:13.700 cases, ignore them, you know, go around them, no longer give them any power. Um, but you know, I,

01:03:20.820 I, I have to think that more people are persuadable in the fullness of time. We're not dealing with

01:03:27.400 a different species of person, you know, in all of these camps, we have recognizably human people

01:03:34.780 who have been persuaded of certain dogmas or certain bad ideas, and they're not disposed to,

01:03:44.340 to run the, the, the, the newest operating system, uh, that would debug these ideas. Right. And so

01:03:53.460 it's, it's, it's, it's, we, we have to just keep advertising the importance of, of getting a

01:04:00.520 firmware upgrade here. And it's, it's true. It's true on both sides. And it's, it's true on the far

01:04:05.760 left. It's true on the, on the right or whatever you want to call Trumpistan. It's not clear how,

01:04:11.400 how that relates to conservatism now, but, um, I mean, to come back to a point you made earlier,

01:04:16.620 I hold out hope for it being easier to deal with the wokeness and the hysteria on the left

01:04:25.720 under Biden than, than under Trump, because Trump was such a, a super stimulus, you know,

01:04:33.020 he was such a, such a confirmation of the worst fears or an apparent confirmation of the worst fears

01:04:39.560 of the left. I mean, cause again, much of what is, has been alleged against him on those particular

01:04:45.880 points, you know, with respect to, to race in particular, I think is, is not true. Right.

01:04:51.780 I mean, I, I happen to think, you know, I happen to believe Trump is a racist, but I don't think

01:04:56.040 he's a white supremacist. And I don't think he has, you know, I think he has been unfairly tarred with,

01:05:00.660 you know, the, the good people on both sides or the fine people on both sides, hoax, you know,

01:05:05.700 that, that is, you know, you go back to that press conference and yes, he did condemn white

01:05:09.600 supremacists and neo-Nazis. Clearly my hope certainly, and my, if I had to bet money on it,

01:05:16.500 I would, I would say it's going to get easier under Biden to recognize how dysfunctional wokeness is

01:05:26.360 politically and ethically, uh, because we, they won't have Trump to point to, or, you know,

01:05:31.340 they, they probably won't have Trump to point to if he doesn't emerge in some other.

01:05:35.700 So far it doesn't look like it's going that way. I mean, so far it does not look like it's going

01:05:39.480 that way. You've got, um, critical race theories coming back thanks to what Biden says will be his

01:05:45.160 first executive order. Uh, the mandated sessions at the federal government amongst, uh, its workers

01:05:50.140 and its contractors, they're already saying that they're going to try to undo the restoration of

01:05:54.560 due process rights for men who get accused on college campuses of sexual assault. Um, those are

01:06:00.720 not good signs, not at all. No, no. And yeah, I mean, it, again, I just, I just know what it's

01:06:08.200 like. I know what it'll be like for someone like me to criticize all that without having to bracket

01:06:15.720 everything I say with an acknowledgement of how crazy things are on the right. You know, it's just,

01:06:21.360 it's, it's not, um, it'll, it'll just be very easy to do now. Uh, you know, maybe this wave is just

01:06:30.920 now cresting, you know, maybe there, there is, there is a bizarre effect here where when the problems

01:06:37.780 get smaller and smaller, the people who are, who are most focused on these problems get more and more

01:06:45.960 agitated and more and act more and more like things have never been worse. Right. It's just,

01:06:51.700 it's on some level, this is the, the narcissism of small differences. Right. I mean, just, if you're

01:06:56.960 not singing from precisely their hymn book, you know, on, on any of these woke issues, well, then

01:07:04.780 you're a Nazi. Right. And, and we're talking about things like, you know, whether you can compliment

01:07:09.560 someone on their hair, right. You know, is, is that a racist microaggression, right? We're not

01:07:14.420 talking about people getting lynched. We're not talking about, you know, people, um, having to

01:07:21.320 function under the rule of, of, of, you know, race-based laws, right. We're talking about, um,

01:07:27.420 you know, off color jokes, you know, someone gets into a, into a elevator at an academic conference.

01:07:33.920 And when they ask me, you know, what floor he says, women's lingerie, right? Like that is a,

01:07:38.120 that is a life deranging cancelable offense because he did a, he, he, you know, offered up a,

01:07:44.420 a dad joke from the 1950s. Uh, that's, that's where we are. And it's, it's eminently

01:07:51.920 criticizable. Right. And there's so many people, I mean, you know, to, to mention some of the black

01:07:56.820 intellectuals who I, I didn't invite on that podcast. There's so many great people like John

01:08:02.200 McWhorter and Glenn Lowry and Thomas Chatterton Williams and Coleman Hughes. And, you know, many of

01:08:07.360 you, I know you, uh, many of whom I know you've spoken with, um, and Camille Foster and, and, uh,

01:08:15.240 Chloe Valdary. And, and I mean, there's just, there, there are people who, you know, it shouldn't

01:08:19.740 matter that the, the, the people I just mentioned are black, uh, but it does matter. Right. And they,

01:08:26.820 they really have a, an enormous responsibility and, and they are shouldering it, uh, to perform an exit,

01:08:34.920 perform an exorcism here. Right. I mean, this is just, because the, the people, uh, on the far left

01:08:42.900 simply cannot hear it from people like us, right. I mean, if you, if you're white and, and, you know,

01:08:52.180 obviously privileged, you know, you have all the privilege marks, uh, that could be, you know,

01:08:57.460 ascribed against anyone in, in our society at this point. Um, you by definition don't get it

01:09:06.040 and can't talk about it. Uh, but there are many people who, um, really can talk about it and,

01:09:12.440 and for whom they, I mean, they really are a kind of kryptonite and it's not an accident that

01:09:17.280 no one really wants to debate them. I mean, the people are not lining up to debate Glenn Lowry and

01:09:22.380 John McWhorter about race issues or Shelby. Or Coleman Hughes, Coleman Hughes, who's been out

01:09:27.040 there saying, Hey, Ibram X. Kendi, just let's talk about your, your book. I don't believe in it.

01:09:32.160 I think you've made mistakes. You've been sloppy. Let's talk about it. And he won't debate Coleman

01:09:36.400 Hughes, a 24 year old guy who's done his homework because he's afraid. But, but to your point earlier,

01:09:43.640 they, right. They can't assail Glenn Lowry and, and Coleman and certainly Thomas Sowell and the way

01:09:49.680 that they could come after you or me, but they won't hear from them. Number one, they get called

01:09:54.480 uncle Tom's number two, they do not get invitations to appear on shows. No one's interested in putting

01:10:01.740 them out there to say how they feel. And I'll just give you one other small example. Um, it's a stupid

01:10:09.020 story, but my, I am in the Bethlehem central hall of fame. Perhaps you didn't know that Sam, but I

01:10:16.040 no, I did not know that. Now I'm, now I'm intimidated. I was inducted years ago. It's

01:10:20.600 not Stanford, but it happened. And, um, they, there's a push by some kids there to get me booted

01:10:27.020 out. Why did I say, cause I said something controversial about race. No, uh, because I

01:10:32.740 retweeted two black men, two prominent black men who criticized the constant focus on race in this

01:10:42.120 country. One was Jason Whitlock of outkick, right? Formerly ESPN, a journalist who's super smart.

01:10:48.600 He's coming on the show. He, I love Jason Whitlock. He's been brilliant on these issues and really

01:10:52.540 brave. And he's been called an uncle Tom by everybody. And one, um, Leonidas Johnson, who's

01:10:57.240 got his own podcast. So now it's to the point where even retweeting these, you know, black men with

01:11:05.140 heterodox views of this race dogma is problematic, right? That's potentially cancelable, whatever

01:11:12.660 they'll, they'll do what they're going to do. But I think it's, no one wants to hear from them.

01:11:17.720 Why isn't Coleman Hughes a household name? If he were saying the stuff the left wants to hear,

01:11:24.420 he would be. Yeah. Uh, well, it's a problem. Uh, you know, I'll, I'll grant you that it's been,

01:11:31.020 it's been a problem for a long time on some adjacent issues. I mean, this is what happened

01:11:36.680 to, to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who I, I think you probably know. Um, she's my friend and she was on the show

01:11:42.440 recently. Yeah. Who, I mean, she's a dear friend of mine and, you know, so, you know, when she was,

01:11:49.220 you know, speaking critically about the treatment of women under Islam and you'd think she would have

01:11:55.820 standing to do this, having, you know, come out of Somalia and, and suffered, you know, all of the,

01:12:01.740 the, um, uh, uh, the collateral damage of that experience that you might expect. And then,

01:12:09.520 uh, literally recapitulating the entire enlightenment project in her own life and becoming a, a, uh,

01:12:19.020 member of parliament in Holland. And then, you know, being, uh, you know, hunted by jihadists and

01:12:24.360 theocrats and, and, you know, essentially becoming the next Salman Rushdie, uh, the, uh, the left

01:12:33.280 didn't want to hear from her, right? I mean, she's, she was much, a much better candidate for, for

01:12:39.360 taking a position in a, a left wing think tank than a right wing one, but only the AEI, the American

01:12:46.740 Enterprise Institute would give her a perch, uh, when she really needed one. Right. And I, you know,

01:12:53.120 while I don't agree with, uh, everything that comes out of that organization, I, you know,

01:12:57.860 never, uh, cease to be grateful to, to them for doing that. Um, and, you know, so she had this

01:13:05.960 experience that many people have had where, when you begin making sense on one of these issues,

01:13:12.820 you know, in her case, the, the, the problem of, of Islamist theocracy, um, and, uh, it, it becomes,

01:13:22.540 um, radioactive enough on the left that you, you have a, it's a, it's a very, it's a disorienting

01:13:31.500 social experience. You, you, you, what you, what shows up in your inbox is, uh, you know, utterly

01:13:39.320 disparaging and crazy and bad faith attacks from the left. And on the right, you kind of get love

01:13:49.020 bombed by a cult, right? I mean, you just, you meet, you know, really friendly people who, who

01:13:54.320 don't agree with much or, uh, of the rest of what you may believe. Right. And so, you know, people on

01:14:02.180 the right, when they, when they hear me, uh, criticize Islam and his connection to jihadism

01:14:08.720 and terrorism, you know, very following very much the line that, that, that Ayan would, would

01:14:15.800 follow here. Um, people on the right are, are so happy to have, to have someone, you know, left of

01:14:24.360 center making sense on this issue that it's, you know, it really is just a completely congenial

01:14:31.200 meeting of the minds, despite all of the other things I believe and will argue for that they

01:14:37.120 find just odious. Right. And then you're like, surprise, surprise. Yeah. Well, yeah. So there's

01:14:42.900 that, I mean, that, I don't know if you ever saw my initial, my, my interviews with Bill O'Reilly,

01:14:48.160 but they, they all went this way where I would say something about Islam and it was a, you know,

01:14:52.180 a perfect meeting of the minds. And then I would switch to Christianity and, and, you know,

01:14:56.280 it was basically at the end of the segment. Um, so that's all the time we have. Yeah, exactly.

01:15:02.960 But, but the, but the truth is the, the, the worst, um, the most dishonest, the most hostile,

01:15:12.280 the most gaslighting, there's the, the most insufferable attacks tend to come from the left.

01:15:19.780 Right. And it's now there's an asymmetry here or kind of an optical illusion perhaps, because I'm

01:15:26.880 not, you know, I'm not dealing with the far right. I'm not talking to neo-Nazis and antisemites. Right.

01:15:32.640 So obviously what, what they would have to say to me would be, you know, just as despicable and,

01:15:38.160 and, and dishonest, I'm sure in the end, but, um, but the truth is I'm not even sure given how crazy

01:15:45.160 the far left has been. And, you know, I on experienced this and, and so many people have

01:15:50.960 experienced this and what many people have, have suffered, I would say, uh, you know, I've, I've

01:15:58.060 certainly resisted this, I think successfully, but not everyone has, there's kind of a tractor beam

01:16:03.640 effect where when you're getting nothing but disingenuous, uh, you know, nausea inducing craziness on

01:16:12.460 the left and the right is, is showing itself willing to just bury the hatchet again and again

01:16:19.060 and again, and we can agree to disagree about all these other things, but you know, we're nice guys

01:16:23.640 over here. Um, you see people get pulled to, into the getting, getting captured by a new audience.

01:16:31.620 And, you know, I'm not going to name names here, but there, you know, we have mutual friends who,

01:16:37.060 who I think just now can't really make a lot of sense when talking about Trump and, and the election

01:16:44.800 say, because they have been captured by a right-wing audience that really treated them well,

01:16:51.680 you know, when the left treated them just despicable. Um, and, and it's always, it's a kind

01:16:57.540 of social and psychological experiment. And it's, um, you know, I, you know, I think it's something to be

01:17:03.060 on guard for, um, not for political reasons, but just for reasons of, of, um, you know, making sense

01:17:10.480 on these issues. We, I know, I like what you're saying. I feel like this is illuminating. This is

01:17:15.380 illuminating because I, I know on the subject of religion, you're, you're not a subscriber. I know

01:17:21.340 you don't, you don't like the term atheist because you don't need to be called that just because you

01:17:25.460 don't happen to subscribe to religiosity, um, in any form, but it's really a rejection of dogma.

01:17:32.360 That's what you're, you're, you're a rejecter of dogma. And I, I actually do like that. I feel

01:17:37.100 like I too am a rejecter of dogma though. I am. I don't think I can say a practicing Catholic,

01:17:43.700 but I'm Catholic. I do believe in God. I don't believe in every story in the Bible. I'm trying

01:17:49.200 to raise my kids Catholic, but I don't, I don't really subscribe to the dogmatic religious thinking.

01:17:54.320 I kind of take what I want from it and use it to reinforce moral and ethical principle

01:18:00.180 principles. I believe in, I use God to threaten them, which works brilliantly. And, um, that's

01:18:07.300 sort of where I am, but I politically am very reticent to sign on for anybody's dogmatic thinking.

01:18:13.960 And I think that's an advantage to me as a journalist, but I, that's why I'm a registered

01:18:19.100 independent. I, I, why, why should I sign on to some party and their platform that I'm invariably

01:18:26.620 going to have many disagreements with nobody out there has got exactly my ideological outlook.

01:18:31.600 And why, why would I just put on their team Jersey? I'm talking about as a citizen. Now I just say

01:18:36.500 like, I I'm going to support you. I think it's, I'm always surprised when someone says they agree

01:18:41.220 with everything on the, on the Republican platform or everything on the democratic platform. It's like

01:18:45.860 all of it. Did you look at it? Did you think about it for yourself? How did you get to that place?

01:18:50.800 And so like, I will confess that I, when I see, I mean, I can't even deal with the far left. I'm so

01:18:56.980 over them. I don't want, I really don't want anything to do with them that I have shut down

01:19:00.860 my willingness to converse with them. I don't think they're honest brokers. I don't think they're,

01:19:05.780 I don't think they're coming at it in good faith. That's what, that's what I want to say about it.

01:19:09.100 The left, I feel differently about liberals. I feel differently about, and I think Republicans,

01:19:13.760 you know, my experiences with them have been largely positive. And so I understand what you're

01:19:18.660 saying, the temptation to put on the Jersey, but I haven't, I, and I, I won't, it's just not the way

01:19:24.800 I'm built. And I'm, I'm more skeptical of these groups and parties, uh, than I am loyal to them.

01:19:31.680 And it's one of the reasons why I'm like a little concerned about, as we were, as I was saying before,

01:19:36.340 the deification of Trump, like I understand defending him and giving him a fair shake. And,

01:19:41.340 and I understand just thinking he's awesome, right? Like I get those people,

01:19:45.000 but what I see happening right now at some of these rallies where people are like, I will do

01:19:49.760 whatever my president tells me to do. I will do what Donald Trump, he's, he sacrificed everything

01:19:54.720 for me. I would die for him. I would die for him. People are saying that. And I don't totally

01:20:01.040 understand how they got there or where that means we're going. Yeah. Well, this is where it crosses over

01:20:09.080 into something like a political religion or a, a kind of pseudo spiritual awakening, right? It's,

01:20:17.540 it's just kind of a mass movement and it's happened on the left. And I would argue that what's happened

01:20:22.680 around BLM has that character as well, right? Like it's, it's just, it's not even trying to get in

01:20:30.340 touch with facts, right? It's, it just, it feels too good to be right about this particular thing

01:20:34.840 that you just don't want to, you know, you've achieved escape velocity somehow from, from the

01:20:41.380 normal constraints of, of public discourse. And you're just soaring above the earth. And that,

01:20:48.660 and that's happened in Trumpistan. Um, it's, uh, it's very strange. I mean, it, you know, it's worth

01:20:57.880 looking at the literature on cults to, to understand it. I mean, it's functioning by the same dynamic

01:21:04.760 the difference between, um, a cult and a, a religion is, is really just in numbers of subscribers

01:21:13.840 from, from my view. I mean, once you get a billion subscribers, well then it's simply indecent

01:21:19.040 to call it a cult. I mean, that's a pejorative term here, here you're talking about most of the

01:21:24.580 people in, in any given society. Um, but if there's, there's only 15 people in a house with,

01:21:30.340 you know, a lot of, you know, burning candles and they've got pictures on the mantle that no one

01:21:34.640 can recognize, um, well then that's a cult and what the hell are you people up to? Uh,

01:21:40.120 and what are you teaching your kids and, and all the rest. And so that, but if you really

01:21:44.960 want to have an honest conversation about the way the world is and how we should all live

01:21:51.520 together within it so as to stand a chance of maximizing human wellbeing or escaping the,

01:21:58.600 the worst possible outcomes that are, that are in fact possible, well then you, you need to appeal

01:22:04.280 to something deeper and something universalizable, right? Something that isn't born of the mere

01:22:09.340 accidents of, of birth or geography or, you know, who you're, you know, what religion your parents

01:22:15.000 happened to, to have, or, you know, what, what politics they happened to have. And we know many

01:22:20.080 people inherit their politics very much like a religion, right? You tend to just be following the line

01:22:25.620 of your parents. Um, and it is, yeah, it's weird. I mean, to come back to the point you made about

01:22:32.860 platforms, it's weird that if you know someone's position on gun control, you know, you stand a good

01:22:40.420 chance of knowing their position on climate change, right? Or on, on a dozen other things that should be

01:22:47.280 unrelated to, and so it's, um, it's a sign that people aren't thinking these, these problems through

01:22:56.120 based on first principles. They're, they're joining a team. They're, they're joining a religion. They're,

01:23:01.280 they've, they're, they're part of a social experiment on some level. It feels good to, to be part of a team.

01:23:08.140 Yeah. It's tribalism. I mean, we, we have, we're deeply tribal and we, um, you know, we're, we're

01:23:16.480 apes in that regard. And we're trying to, we're trying to leave the monkey behind here. And again,

01:23:23.660 all we have is conversation by which to do it. Now, I want to pick up on something you said about

01:23:29.800 going forward in life and being focused on, you know, what matters and who we are as, as human

01:23:34.520 beings. You are, you're deep into meditation. You've studied it for years. You've practiced it

01:23:41.880 for years. You've read all the books you've spoken with all the gurus. And, but the thing that stood

01:23:47.380 out to me and just reading up about this piece of your life was, um, you, I read, this is a quote

01:23:53.500 from you. I've gone into silence for a week and meditated 18 hours a day just to see what can be

01:24:00.200 revealed through disciplined use of attention through introspection and to see how it can inform

01:24:07.240 the study of the mind. And then you didn't say anything more after that. And as somebody who

01:24:15.520 doesn't meditate, I was wondering, could you like short form it for those of us who didn't do that?

01:24:21.800 That seems like an important thing to know. Um, well, yeah, so I, I've spoken a lot about

01:24:26.440 meditation in, um, I wrote a book, uh, it appears in several of my books, but I wrote a book on the

01:24:33.540 topic called waking up. And I have a, an app by that title where I, where I, I and other people

01:24:39.080 teach various techniques of meditation and talk about its, its connection to understanding the mind

01:24:45.260 scientifically and, and, and just living an examined life altogether. I mean, just, just kind of

01:24:50.760 rebooting the, the ancient philosophical project of, of developing a philosophy of life that actually

01:24:57.980 matters, right. That actually changes one's moment to moment engagement with the world and aligning

01:25:03.900 one's ethics and one's emotional life and, and really trying to, to live a life that you don't

01:25:12.080 regret in the end. I mean, you don't regret at the end of any given day or a given hour, but you don't

01:25:17.700 regret at the end of your life. And what would it mean to, to, to do that? And, and how can we do

01:25:22.760 that? Um, so that's, that's really the kind of the center of gravity of, of my, my interest at this

01:25:28.400 point. But yeah, with respect to sitting silent retreats, yeah, I did a lot of that, you know,

01:25:36.500 mostly in my twenties, I spent about two years on silent meditation retreats and, um, the longest

01:25:42.840 one was three months. Um, and I did a couple of those and then, you know, several, you know,

01:25:48.800 one month and two month retreats. And, and then yes, you know, you can't talk at all.

01:25:54.080 No, it was on some retreats. You, you have an interview with a teacher every other day for

01:26:00.320 about 10 minutes. So you, you, you, they just need to check in on you and guide your practice and

01:26:05.920 make sure you're not losing your mind. Um, as some small percentage of people do under those

01:26:11.120 conditions as you, as you might imagine. And, and, uh, but basically it's, it is silence

01:26:16.320 and it's, you're not even making eye contact with people. I mean, you're really, you really

01:26:20.220 are kind of locked down. If you have no perspective on the nature of, of mind, uh, prior to concepts,

01:26:31.160 prior to your, your thinking incessantly about everything, uh, prior to the conversation you're

01:26:37.280 having with yourself, uh, you are a mere hostage of that conversation. And it's an, it's an amazingly

01:26:45.640 distorted conversation. I mean, you'll, you'll tell yourself the same thing 10 times in a row

01:26:51.180 and never get bored, right? If someone walked into the room and spoke the same sentence to you over

01:26:56.540 and over again, you know, you, one, you'd think they were crazy and two, you would get out of the

01:27:02.340 room, right? You'd say this, this is, this is not worth my time. But when you look at the kinds of

01:27:08.000 things you will tell yourself and, you know, you know, every hour on the hour, every minute on the

01:27:14.880 minute, right? When you're perseverating on something, when you're trying, when you're, when

01:27:18.060 you're really caught by something, um, it is, it is a psychotic dream really. I mean, the difference

01:27:26.320 between you and a psychotic in that case is, is, is that you have the good sense to keep your mouth

01:27:30.600 shut? And the psychotic is verbalizing everything, you know, out on the sidewalk, but that's basically

01:27:36.340 the difference, right? You're, you know, we, if you could just imagine your thoughts broadcast on a

01:27:40.840 loudspeaker every moment of the day for all to hear, you know, we'd, we'd all sound crazy under

01:27:46.020 those conditions. And meditation is a technique for recognizing the mechanics of all that and

01:27:53.180 relinquishing it, you know, if, if only for moments at a time. And as you get better at it,

01:27:58.200 you can, you can, you know, get off the train for longer. And what you discover when you do that is

01:28:04.120 that the mind is a, is, is the basis for, for all the wellbeing you have ever experienced in your

01:28:11.260 life. You know, it really is, there's an intrinsic quality to consciousness, you know, before anything

01:28:19.060 changes, you know, in the very midst of any ordinary experience, you know, before you, you know,

01:28:24.520 before, before the pain in your knee goes away, I mean, even in the midst of an unpleasant experience,

01:28:30.380 there is, there is a real freedom, right? A real, a real sense of, of, you know, compassion for

01:28:39.720 yourself and for others and, and just a radical openness, right? And, and I mean, this is something

01:28:47.400 that many people experience first, you know, taking, you know, one or another psychedelic, right? And this

01:28:53.460 is what happened to me, you know, when I was 18, I took MDMA. Um, and I had to look that up. That's

01:29:00.040 ecstasy. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and ecstasy, you know, since it became very popularized as a club

01:29:08.040 drug and people took it in, in comparatively, you know, frivolous ways. And it's not to say they

01:29:13.660 didn't have a lot of fun in the process, but, you know, originally it was, it was, you know, designed

01:29:19.820 and, and taken by people, you know, very much with the intention of discovering something about the

01:29:25.460 nature of their minds. And, and that was really the, the, the framing I had when I, when I took it. And

01:29:31.080 yeah, I discovered that it was possible to be much less of an asshole than I was tending to be,

01:29:38.460 right. I mean, it was possible to be deeply at peace with myself and the world and, uh, and to be

01:29:48.200 happy, right. Like really, really happy down to my toes. And then, and then I think the H word

01:29:53.920 and, and, and, and then, and then you, you know, then you lose that and then you become interested in

01:29:59.700 why, right. Like what is, what is it about how I'm using my attention that reliably produces

01:30:07.700 something less than the, the deepest peace and satisfaction and love and connection that I've

01:30:14.960 ever experienced, right. How am I, how am I failing to actualize that day after day? And that's when

01:30:21.680 a practice like meditation becomes relevant to people. You, can you get yourself there? Can you get

01:30:27.980 yourself to the ecstasy version of yourself through meditation? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Although

01:30:35.820 that isn't actually the, the primary goal is the primary goal of, of certain types of meditation.

01:30:43.320 And so in a Buddhist context, there's a meditation called Metta, which is the Pali word for loving

01:30:49.800 kindness. And, and in that practice, you, you are trying to create a specific state of mind,

01:30:55.600 very much like that, you know, what many people have experienced on, on ecstasy, which is, you know,

01:31:02.640 unconditional love for lack of a better word. But I mean, it really is that it's, it's, you recognize

01:31:08.800 that love is a, a state of being that you can fall into more and more deeply. And it really just,

01:31:18.960 it's not, it's not transactional. It's not like you, you love someone because, you know, you,

01:31:24.060 because of your history with them, because of all the good things they did for you because of,

01:31:28.540 you know, because of how much fun you have in their presence. No, it's, you can actually recognize

01:31:33.640 that you really want other people to be happy. You, you really want them to be free of suffering

01:31:40.840 and the depth of that wanting, the depth of that commitment to the wellbeing of other people,

01:31:47.720 even people you've never met, right? Even people who are your enemies, who, who are working hard to

01:31:53.160 make themselves your enemies, right? I mean, you, you, you can stand back from your kind of the,

01:31:59.160 you, your, your reactivity and your kind of the, the, the personal aspect of those collisions

01:32:06.700 and recognize that on some basic level, everyone is suffering. Everyone is going to lose everything

01:32:14.800 they love in this world. You know, everyone is, is we're all in this astonishing circumstance

01:32:21.520 together. And what you want, even for the bad people is an end to suffering. I mean, you want

01:32:31.540 people to be happy. And, and that is the, that wanting is a state of mind that you can focus on.

01:32:40.860 And it's, and so metta practice is the, is the, is the practice of, of, of amplifying that intention

01:32:46.720 and emotion to the point where, yeah, it, it just obliterates everything else in your mind for the

01:32:51.960 time that you're doing that practice. So you just, you just feel a depth of love for everyone,

01:32:58.560 you know, for, for no reason, other than the fact that that's, that's what you feel for them,

01:33:04.300 right? You actually just, because no matter how bad they are, and it's, I mean, it's, this may

01:33:09.040 sound, you know, bizarre or, or, or its own, in its own way, pathological to people, but I mean,

01:33:15.940 just take, you know, take one of the worst people who's ever lived. Right. And so there are many

01:33:21.480 people on this list. Um, you know, I wouldn't put Trump on this list has, it might surprise some

01:33:26.640 people, but, um, you take, I was going to ask you whether you've meditated on him. Yeah. I mean,

01:33:31.420 so he's, he's, he's harder than most people to feel compassion for, for reasons that are

01:33:36.300 interesting, but, um, let me take someone like Hitler. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, my, my favorite for

01:33:42.180 this, this use case is, um, Uday Hussein. Right. So one, one of Saddam Hussein's sons, you know,

01:33:48.080 his worst son. Right. So this, I mean, he is just the prototypical evil person, right? He's no

01:33:54.840 question. He was a psychopath. And this was a guy who, when he was driving through Baghdad with his

01:34:00.320 bodyguards and he would see a wedding in progress, they would descend on the wedding and he would rape

01:34:05.900 the bride. And in certain cases he killed the bride. I mean, he did this more than one case.

01:34:11.080 Right. And it's just, just the most despicable human being you can imagine. Right. So how could

01:34:16.740 you feel love or compassion for Uday Hussein? Uh, well, just look at his, his lifeline as a whole,

01:34:26.940 right. Just to just roll back the clock on him and think of him as the four-year-old Uday Hussein.

01:34:32.840 Right. So how do you feel about the four-year-old? Right. Well, he's, he, I mean, he may have been a

01:34:38.360 psychotic kid too. I don't know. He may have been a scary little boy. I wouldn't, I wouldn't doubt it,

01:34:43.580 but he was above all a really unlucky one. Right. He, first of all, he had Saddam Hussein as a father,

01:34:51.380 right. I mean, how unlucky can you get? Um, and he was the four-year-old boy who was on track to become

01:34:59.520 the very scary man who, you know, we wound up killing, you know, happily. That's, you know,

01:35:06.400 that's exactly what we should have done with him, uh, given who he was and given the fact that we

01:35:11.400 couldn't capture him. But, um, it is appropriate to feel compassion for the four-year-old boy who

01:35:20.540 became Uday Hussein. I mean, that is an unlucky life for, through no fault of his own. He didn't pick

01:35:26.040 his genes. He didn't pick his parents. He didn't pick the, he didn't, he didn't decide to be born

01:35:32.220 into a war-torn honor-based society that would, would amplify all of his flaws. Right. Uh, and so

01:35:39.140 you can feel compassion for that boy. And then the question is, at what point is it illegitimate to

01:35:46.000 feel compassion for him? Right. When he's five, when he's six, when he's seven, when he's eight,

01:35:50.020 like, when does he cross over into no longer being an appropriate target for your, your, your

01:35:58.800 well-intentioned wish that he'd just be happy, that he just overcome suffering. And you can get

01:36:05.720 there. I mean, you can really get there with the worst people. Um, but that actually is not the,

01:36:11.000 the center of the bullseye as far as I'm concerned for meditation in general. I mean,

01:36:16.040 in general meditation is not about producing specific states of mind, like loving kindness is

01:36:23.740 about recognizing that, that ordinary consciousness. I'm just, just the, the consciousness that is,

01:36:29.960 that is hearing my words right now. I'm just the consciousness that's allowing the two of us to

01:36:34.420 have a conversation, um, is already free of, of self. Sam Harris, living and

01:36:46.020 examined life. I love that. That's, that's inspirational to me. It does. And, and see where

01:36:51.820 that goes and see how it makes you feel and get really honest about the answers to both of those

01:36:58.940 things that I think I can do. Today's episode was brought to you in part by Jan Marini skin research,

01:37:05.640 dramatic results. Dermatologist recommended. Get your award-winning skincare system now

01:37:10.880 at Jan Marini.com. Want to tell everybody that, uh, next show, which is on Wednesday is going to be

01:37:18.100 with two people who are spectacular. Andy McCarthy of national review, who is the one lawyer who's been

01:37:24.940 super smart on all the Trump legal challenges, really fair to the president too. Unlike most

01:37:29.780 and Selena Zito, who I've corresponded with a bunch online, but I've never actually met her. And, uh,

01:37:35.120 she's somebody who I love her voice and I love the angles she pursues on stories. She's one of those

01:37:39.960 folks who gets fly over country and isn't disdainful of it. So I think those are two great

01:37:44.240 people to talk to. Well, it'll be, you know, our first show after the electoral college meets and

01:37:48.980 votes today and we'll get their take on where we are and what's going to happen, you know, between now

01:37:54.060 and January 20th. Sound counsel and thoughts from two smart, likable people. That's the kind of show I

01:38:01.120 love. If you don't want to miss it, go over there and subscribe. Make sure you're a subscriber. That helps

01:38:05.900 that, that lets me come right into your inbox in the morning, the top of your phone saying, Hey,

01:38:10.640 don't forget me today. Come listen to me. Talk to Selena. Um, and then of course you've got to

01:38:15.720 download and you've got a rate five stars and more than anything, send me a review. Will you?

01:38:19.900 It's been fun to read them. People make me laugh. Some people swear. Some people ramble on

01:38:24.820 some people write weird sexual things. Don't do that. But I do like hearing from you and, uh,

01:38:33.420 any guest ideas are good too. A lot of new names that I hadn't even heard of. And then I send my

01:38:38.140 team to go Google and find and, and call in some circumstances. So anyway, it's been a pleasure

01:38:43.660 and to be continued after we have results from the electoral college. Talk to you Wednesday.

01:38:49.640 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:38:54.820 The Megan Kelly show is a devil may care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 14, 2020

Sam Harris on Political Tribalism, Cultural Divisions and Finding Inner Peace ｜ Ep. 37

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