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Sam Harris Extended Interview released (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-30 06:25:07
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

So that secret episode we were teasing dropped and it’s the ever unifying figure of Sam Harris.

At some point we probably should do a retrospective on the experience of interviewing Sam for Patreons but it was definitely a distinctive experience.

Will be interested to hear what everyone thinks about the episode. We are anticipating his haters and fans both finding this annoying for different reasons but maybe we will be pleasantly surprised.

Anyhow hope you enjoy and let us know what you thought!

Files

Comments

Tom Allison

Wait, where is it? I’m on my phone and I can’t find anything to click…

Tom Allison

OK, found it on the site… Wow, 3 hours!

Tom Allison

Oh and, triple wow: Sam the-man Harris - “a strong advocate for the importance of religion in modern societies” (as Chris puts it) HIMSELF - doing a *response*. Nice get as the journos like to say… Looking forward to a nice long walk.

Incomplete Thoughts

This was my guess. Great! Sam is always good when he has someone to interact with (e.g. his episodes with Paul Bloom and Very Bad Wizards)

collapsing

initial thoughts•••first time i've heard Sam explain why he doesn't criticise Rubin etc.. friendship, loyalty, knowing them . Fair enough and possibly endearing but not in keeping with Spock like logic . Made him a bit more understandable. Still not sure if realises the meta- ness of him using the blind spot analogy ...😐

Emma

I can't believe I used to like Sam Harris 😕 But Chris did a great job 👏 Matt a little AWOL. Well I haven't made it the whole way to the end. But I guess I have to hand it to Sam that it was brave to come on and try and defend his anti-woke stuff in front of an audience he must know was not going to be sympathetic.

Tom McCool

Sam’s rather disturbing on his claim that the institutions (media, academia, incl high school) have been captured by ‘wokeism’. His Bari Weiss like asserting the NYTIMES or CNN etc. are all woke and thereby prejudiced in their news coverage. This sort of broad brush that the corporate ownership is woke is belied everyday by their editorial coverage especially their op ed writers. I feel like i wasted all this time listening to Sam and Chris cross talk, interrupting each other to try and explain themselves. Blecch.

William LEGRAIN

I thought it was good. I think the whole tribal bias conversation got a little redundant and ultimately not that productive. I see Chris's point, but Sam seemed to also have good explanations. It's amazing how much of Sam's history Chris knows. Lol.

Tom Allison

Do you think there is enough left on the table to warrant any clarification of positions in writing? I’m less plugged into some of the history and details of the issues that were being discussed and I will be listening again, but I got the feeling a lot of groundwork was laid that might be fruitfully built upon in a medium in which each has an uninterrupted chance to explain their positions/concerns. I think this was a valuable encounter, overall.

Mike Nelson

When Sam speaks, I have to increase playback speed to 1.5x to get through him. It was nice to drop back to 1.0x for the outro.

Joel H. Dinolt

Have to listen to this in chunks because Sam is just so infuriating. Am halfway through and I really appreciate Chris pressing Sam on the charity issue.

Dexter King Williams

Sam Harris: "the 1619 project is a complete subversion of our intellectual life in a way fox news isnt"

Laura Reinger

I commend you for both keeping your cool during this. I’m not sure either of you ever managed to completely finish a point without him interrupting. I hope he listens back to this and has some realisation that despite him clearly thinking an awful lot of himself he doesn’t actually appear to have developed some basic manners and communication skills.

Brian Naas

I've followed Sam for years and this was legit the best debate I've ever heard him engage in. Chris really put him on his heels! Angry dog indeed.

Rob Franks

Nice work putting that together, It was a really good listen. I wanted Sam to back down even a little from some of his takes but it never really happened. Was a novel experience to hear him face a well structured line of questioning, nice job Chris!

Christine Jenkins

I admire anyone who will discuss their views in a thoughtful way with someone who disagrees- and someone who will ask challenging questions in a clear and respectful way. I don’t agree with everything Sam says on any subject, and very much disagree with lots. I don’t agree with all the DTG views either. But I really appreciated both Sam and Chris having this conversations. I can learn and improve my discernment and nuanced understanding by listening to such interactions- which is much appreciated. I look forward to more such conversations.

Tom Allison

Sam is a master of self-presentation and has the same pleasant well-reasoned sounding tone when he is saying something that makes sense as when his points are utterly outrageous and objectionable. Combine this with his apparently well-practiced style of not taking turns in a normal way in a conversation without any modulation of tone (I do wonder how this works out with someone who isn’t as accommodating as Chris was) and I return to wanting to see the issues at play here laid out on the table as uninterrupted text. He does have a *massive* audience - and while I realize getting this lengthy a conversation and remaining calm and challenging is already a huge service, the whole thing seems so on-mission for the DTG that I think another round of analysis would be in order.

Tim Graubaek

I thought this was pretty good. I do think that the last hour and a half on the semantics of tribalism was a bit... long. Anyway, kudos to Sam and DTG for doing this.

Kyle D

As a big fan of both I thought it was good intellectual sparring but Chris’ verbal arm jabs got tiresome. “Focusing of wokeness isn’t tribalism but a matter of priorities” was a point from Sam where he didn’t recognize how political prioritization is itself a tribal feature and Chris didn’t recognize this as the point he was trying to seemingly drive at. Instead it went in circles a little too long but was a novel topic to discuss with Sam and he came out very well in the end imo. Cheers guys!

Jonathan Cano

As a fan of and subscriber to the Sam Harris podcast I really liked the discussion despite the talking past each other on "tribalism". If you had the agility to simply relabel what Chris called "tribalism" to "" you probably would have saved a lot of wasted energy. As a fan of Sam's I still disagree with him on a lot of things. E.g. I thought Ezra sounded more reasonable than Sam when they argued during his appearance on Sam's podcast. I hope (1) you do another show with Sam Harris, perhaps in 6 months or a year and (2) you do a better job preparing so that the next discussion has less talking past one another. Perhaps the "preparing" can include some email exchanges or each side sending some references for the other to read in preparation.

Jonathan Cano

@Chris : you've done a good job internalizing rapaport's rules. particularly highlighting points of agreement on various topics. Keep up the good work.

Paul Bowman

Good episode. Full disclosure, I've never listened to Sam Harris before (nor will I bother seeking him out after listening to this). Whatever approach to questioning/interviewing you take, someone's going to be unhappy. Personally I appreciated Chris's robust approach because it revealed certain rhetorical techniques Harris uses to muddy the water while he's gathering time to think or trying to divert the subject. He reminds me of those squids that release ink when they feel threatened or under attack. Harris has a lot of rhetorical ink to spread in the water when he gets a challenging question. I was aware of the islamophobia before hand, but believing France is about to become 50% muslim in the next decades and result in a civil war, killing millions (50/50 chance) is batshit delusional and quite proximate to "great replacement" conspiracism. Incredibly un-selfaware (ironically, given the meditation & mindfulness stuff) and un-selfcritical. Reminded me of that line from an exasperated Lloyd George that negotiating with Devalera was like "trying to pick up mercury with a fork".

Christopher McLaughlin

I’ve listened to Waking Up, now Making Sense, with Sam Harris for well over 5 years. Sam’s greatest character flaw is his lack of self awareness. How he can attribute everything that happens in his life to luck while maintaining his massive ego is an endless source of hilarity. I have a lot of love for Sam but he isn’t a good listener, he rarely addresses the exact critique being made of him, and he relies on well worn talking points that longtime listeners of his like me have heard dozens and dozens of times. That being said, this podcast was a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to hearing what Chris and Matt think about Sam’s responses to Chris’s critiques.

Gareth Lee

Thanks very much for this episode. Hearing Sam Harris being confronted on these issues was very cathartic for me. I'm not a Sam Harris hater by any means but there are parts of his world view that I find very irritating.

Peter Zavlaris

YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!! Just kidding, I just wanted your attention because I completely agree with the positive review you read at the end of this episode. I feel the exact same way that your voices are great to have as IDW criticisms for those of us that have been following them for years. You both deserve praise and encouragement. Even better, I’m now a supporter on patreon…keep up the good work! During Covid, I felt I could no longer trust the news sources I had been relying on my entire life. I know Fox was bogus, but somewhere between every story on CNN, NY Times, etc. seemingly ending with ‘because Trump is evil’ and the fact I’m supposed to live in terror of my neighbors…accept for when I wasn’t because of social justice…I lost faith. So up until you guys, the IDW was the only group making any sense to me. Thank you for stepping up into the void. Your voices are so badly needed.

Anonymous ethicist, not a serial killer at all, just asking questions.

Good episode. I don't know how Sam came away from that thinking he looked good. He seemed like a man terrified to be labeled as tribal, thinking he's perfectly, and coming accross as a conspiracy theorist. I think what bugs me the most about Sam is how he consistently comments as an authority on academia and so many fields when his own stint in academia was hilariously short. He thinks he's a Galileo, but he's an Brett Weinstein.

Kirsten Greed

I thought the first section was excellent! On Realization. Thank you Matt for pointing out the Epistemic problem with verification: In order to see it you have to do it properly and if you dont see it that must mean you aren't doing it properly. Also citing people who think they have experienced it and then change their mind. Sam doesn't claim to be fully enlightened but has enough experience to "know what he knows" I was a Siddha Yoga devotee in the early 80s. The sales pitch was that we all experience flow in moments. "The Self is Allready Realised" but that we need to follow certain practises to become established in that knowledge. Years later I discovered they had an escape clause "There is no such thing as self realization" It is like a lolly that you promise a child to get them a certain distance along the path. They need to leave the path to reach the goal. It would be interesting to know Sam's thoughts on Guru Self Deception.... although the question might put him into defence mode. The second section was exhausting to listen to. I thought that Sam wasn't quite as defensive as he was with Ezra Klein Well done Chris for tackling it.

Joshua G Ziegler

It took me a couple of days to finish this podcast. This was an hour longer than it needed to be. Sam doesn’t want to be in a tribe. Chris wants to wrap everyone in a neat little tribal bow. Got it. Can we pour out a little liquor for the Dave Rubin’s, Gad Saad’s, and all the other irrational IDW’s we lost along the way during the past 6 years? Trump has murdered a few careers and we’ll look back at all the intellectual blood that has been spilled in his name. I triple heart the work you do here at Guru’s. Don’t lose sight that Sam is an ally on the good side once all this illiberal nonsense shakes out.

Joshua G Ziegler

BTW, I blame Chris Hitchens cancer on a good bit of the proliferation of this GURU chicanery you’ve showcased. He would have cut these charlatans low while three sheets to the wind and full drunk.

db

Good episode, love the podcast. Left feeling a little concerned about Chris’s Twitter usage. That ish can be toxic - same with most social media drama. Surely a near impossible balance, but is there a way to stay up to speed with the gurus while avoiding the culture war minutia? Most of it is just distracting fluff anyway..

Gil Garcia

Sam can tie modern "woke" ideology to specific documents written in 1948, but he is unable to tie current white nationalist propaganda to historical records of old school white supremacist ideology. If white nationalism is an uknowable political force because he's too busy to look into it, then he can't have a conversation about where he fits in the Venn diagram with white nationalist ideologies. Using Sam's logic, since Anne Coulter writes unkind things about Trump, there cannot be any overlap between her views and Trumpism, or his flavor of tribalism. Sam thinks that Fox and Newsmax are dangerous, but he's never watched them. How does he know? He thinks Rubin is a neutral journalist, but can't comment on the content because he doesn't know much about it. Sam needs to look into a person's soul or hear them say the N-word to determine whether a person is racist, but only needs to look at a retweet to determine whether someone is woke.

nolipsorjoints

In this supposed moral and intellectual emergency, Sam Harris is not aware of Tucker on Fox somehow and worried about the pablam of the New York Times?