Sam Harris on Israel, Radical Islam, Trump, Taking Ecstasy, and more.

don't be nervous Sam I'm kidding I'm nervous um Mr Sam Harris um who's probably at the point of not needing an introduction but he's a famous podcaster a neuroscientist an author and um I think one of the great thinkers there are right now so welcome Mr Sam Harris well thank you noome great to see you great to see you um so look let's just get into it I don't want to keep you forever um you've come out with and I haven't actually um checked in the last few weeks but you came out with a few very very forceful defenses of Israel the action in Gaza and um just a general world view which paints um Israel as a as a force for for good in a way against a a uh kind of a civilizational battle against radical Islam um have you do you feel as strongly about it now as you did at the outset of the war yeah I do I you know my position on Israel and um anti-Semitism and related topics is is somewhat difficult to summarize I mean it's it is a um uh it can sound somewhat paradoxical I mean for instance I you know my position against organized religion is such and and and religious identities is such that you know I'm uncomfortable in simply asserting that uh the world needs a Jewish State um certainly Jewish uh you know if you as construed uh in religious terms rather than than ethnic terms um but given the the genocidal anti-Semitism of so much of the world historically I think that's all the justification one needs to to figure out how to to uh give the Jews um a state that is that that represents real safety and and and sovereignty right so it's you know I mean if there has to be a state organized around a religion I think a Jewish State should be the last one obviously I'm not a fan of Christian States and Muslim states either um so anyway that's a mouthful and that's not that doesn't sound like straightforward support of Israel except for the fact that I view Israel's struggle against Hamas as a um as a kind of canary in the coal mine example for a much larger civilizational struggle that you referred to which is the you know the the the fight for open societies and and liberal tolerant societies everywhere um in defense of a a very real assault on their core values and this assault is coming from one religion above all uh and that religion is Islam and um you know I I there really needs to be a civil war within the Muslim world for the the soul of Islam if Islam is really a religion of Peace uh that's getting hijacked by extremists well then Muslims everywhere need to unite against their extremists and if they can't figure that out well then we've got a much larger problem with Islam right so that that it remains to be demonstrated that Islam is compatible with modernity uh I certainly hope it is there's there's around two billion Muslims on Earth and certainly many many many millions of them want to live in the modern world and don't want to live like medieval barbarians uh but many of their co-religionists are in fact barbarians and Hamas is a is a group that is as um it's not even the most barbaric jihadist group on offer that distinction would go to the Islamic State but given what happened on October 7th we should have no Illusions about what they are capable of and what they aspire to do and so you in its current conflict with Hamas yes I I um I support Israel 100% And I I think there is no outcome here that's acceptable apart from an just an unconditional defeat of Hamas let me ask you a couple questions and then get to the war um just because I always find it interesting I've heard you say this before I don't I mean I know that Judaism is a religion but I don't Define my attachment to Judaism or my feeling of being Jewish nor did my father or most of the the Jews I grew up with is anything other than an ethnic identification yeah which is verifiable genetically and by by every uh measure that any ethnic identification can be measured I think it qualifies no yeah that's what's confusing about Judaism as a as an identity to to discuss in a context like this because obviously there are religious Jews who uh believe that the creator of the universe gave them the um a specific piece of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean uh right and the their evidence for that is in the Bible uh and they um and their their their attachment to that land is framed very much in in religious and you know even prophetic terms I mean there their Jews were waiting for the Messiah to return and and right all of that and so that that's um but these were not ideas of early zionists they were not that was not there yeah that's true that's true yeah yeah so so yeah and it's it's more confusing still that Zionism historically has not been an explicitly religious um imperative so um yeah the the the the thing that is is um most confusing is that you can find examples of religious Jews Who Who Are You Know seemingly as fanatical as islamists and you know even jihadists in their own context I mean that the religion is different the the principles are different the the the um calls for violence are are slightly different but you can find your your crackpot Jew in the Holy Land you you stick a microphone in front front of his face and he can sound like he's a member of uh you know some Jewish equivalent of Hamas right and the the the uneducated consumer of that media in the West can then consider that evidence that there really is no distinction between the fanaticism on the Islamic side or the the Palestinian side in this case and the fanaticism on the Israeli and and Jewish side um that's just not yeah but that gets I'm noticing a lot of that gets spun up now and they're even you know they're they're you rations of this there are Jews now who are calling for the resettlement of Gaza you know and calling rather explicitly for you know something like ethnic cleansing to get the Palestinians out of Gaza so so that place can be be turned into a a proper uh part of Israeli civilization um and you know I you it's anybody's guess whether whether a two-state solution is at all a viable project at this point I I somehow don't see it and so I don't know what the alternatives to that are but there's it's obvious that it's quite inflammatory to have Jews at this moment calling for ethnic cleansing in Gaza given you know all the the assurances that that that's actually not any any sane person's uh motive um again all of this is is is only really a problem because the Israelis have never had a partner in peace really in the Palestinian people um it's easy to say that Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians in general and and I'm sure that is in is true at least in part but obviously there's no bright line between Hamas and the the kinds of attitude towards Jews uh that um that brought Hamas into Power among the Palestinians so uh it's it's a complicated picture but the very simple uh framing which I think is nonetheless true is that we have a problem world we being you know Western civilized people who want to live in open societies uh and tolerate all manner of human difference have a problem uh trying to integrate the uh the religious triumphalism and fanaticism uh and Frank lunacy of jihadists and uh to you know jihadists in a certain number are simply intolerable to us and again this is not just yeah non-muslims it should be true of all Muslims who are who who want to live sane lives in the 21st century that jihadism is just a deal breaker and we have to figure out how to to um act on that premise in a hundred countries let me ask you how to how you respond to this I I grew up you know um knowing hundreds of Muslim Arabic people and if I had not been aware of what went on in the rest of the world I would have found it impossible to believe that what we know is going on there in terms of jihad and radical Islam was true I like well I know hundreds of Muslims people none of them are like that you know none of them would approve of that and yet it is true how do how do you explain that is how do you explain that well it's just you making friends with people in any Community is not a valid way of doing real you know opinion research at a population level it doesn't matter how many people you know or have met or have you know you know befriended um you just there are lots of problems there you know in extrapolating from those encounters with you know the populations in in whole societies right so first of all the people who would become your friend in the Muslim Community are are self-selecting group right there people in the Muslim Community maybe maybe because they also work with me there was a certain Randomness to the way they I I Came Upon them and they may not be frank with me but somehow there seems to be less jihadism in in the American Muslim Community I believe that's true yeah that's true that's a kind of a happy accident of just how people got here I think Western Europe has a a bigger problem but um it you know it is hard to really Plum the depths of people's beliefs and what those beliefs entail given the right conditions right I mean it would have been hard I think to have made friends in you know throughout Europe in the late 19th century early 20th century and have detected in the you know the smiles and and you know cultural attitudes of of of Ordinary People a propensity for genocidal violence against the Jews but of course you know the the the Third Reich managed to unmask that propensity not just in German citizens but throughout Europe I mean it's quite if you you know if you read the the history of the Holocaust you um the assumption that it was accomplished you know largely uh you know or almost entirely as a result of of the industrial killing apparatus you know typified by a place like aitz and that only a few people really had to get this diabolical Machinery moving and a genocide was accomplished that's really not true I mean the the level of collaboration throughout not just German Society but in every country they invaded or or even almost invaded you know I mean the countries that were given an ultimatum countries that were given there just a the slightest nudge in the direction of genocide um they found you know all too willing executioners to to use uh gold hogin phrase um throughout Europe you know in in uh you know Romania and Ukraine and Croatia and lvia and Lithuania and I mean it's just it was incredible what happened and I I I think it would have been certainly true to say that many of the Jews who were annihilated by their neighbors had considered the their those neighbors friends uh up until the moment that the genocide got rolling so it's just it at this point in history you know the the lesson I would draw from that is not that in every you know person there's a boundless propensity for for evil um but that when you have a group uh of people or or a wider culture that speaks casually of genocide and its aspiration to commit it uh we should take them seriously right we should never assume that people are bluffing when they say they want to eradicate a whole population um and of course you know the the the charter the original charter of Hamas was explicitly genocidal the talk about Jews throughout the Muslim World frankly has been has been genocidal for for for quite a long time um the Palestinians teach effectively they teach a gen genocidal hatred of Jews to children in schools right many of these schools are un funded right there's just a ghastly culture here of of religiously inspired hatred that we have to figure out how to perform an exorcism on right I mean there's just no way that this can be maintained and we can expect to arrive at anything like a lasting peace for you know in the Middle East so um yeah I mean I just it's just we have to take this these possibilities Ser seriously because now we know in the aftermath of several genocides that people are are quite capable of it now when you say an exorcism people are going to hear War you know violence is we're not we're not going to persuade them or or say a prayer uh how what kind of exorcism can there be other than just time working its own magic burning out somehow yeah no well I do think there's a role for war because I think jihadism has to lose right I mean that you know I this is why a call for a ceasefire at this point uh in Gaza strikes me as so wrong-headed I mean first we we have to admit how catastrophic the the consequences of this war have been in Gaza I mean is just it's just horrific and uh it's entirely the fault of Hamas I Hamas is using a civilian population as human Shields quite consciously quite deliberately I mean this is just a tactic of war that is unconscionable um and for and for the for Israel to have been deterred by that uh is synonymous with their own suicide effectively I mean I you know this is they they can't live with Hamas on their Border in the aftermath of of October 7th um so I you know I think jihadism as a project throughout the Muslim world has to be revealed to be a dead end right like the religious triumphalism the expectation of ultimate Victory here on the part of the most fanatical Muslims on Earth has to be embarrassed again and again and again and and humiliation is actually the proper goal right I mean the idea that there's some kind of compromise some kind of fa- saving compromise to make with these people again the most fanatical religious uh people in the Muslim world the people who take you know the principles of martyrdom all too seriously the people who think blasphemy and apostasy is a killing offense right there can there can be no compromise with these attitudes this this is this is a war they've they have declared war on us they declare war on us every day they they um they articulate their vision of life I mean they they when they say things like we love death more than the infidels love life or we love death more than the Jews love life or we love death more than the Americans love life we have to take them at their word right and and some some some number of these people um obviously need to be martyred right I mean there's just there is no the moment they have the power to kill Jews and apostates and infidels that's what they intend to do right so so the the war is already on you know uh whatever happens in Gaza uh and I think yeah the the idea that we are going to make some kind of rational terrestrial concession with these people that's going to mify them um is is just a masochistic fantasy and it's bellied by the fact that they they clearly articulate their plans to themselves and to us given every opportunity I mean they you know every ceasefire is in their view just an opportunity to reather strength so as to further prosecute their war against the West against the Jews against the great Satan Etc um this has to come to an end and and the the majority of the world's Muslims have to help bring it to an end right I mean this is and there's some signs that the the various regimes that with whom whom you know Israel is is um hoping to broke broke our lasting peace I mean you know even the Saudis who have done so much to export jihadism to the rest of the world you know when you look at the regime itself they seem to be at the end of their patience for this kind of you know Theocratic craziness um and that remains to be seen whether that they they in fact are but yeah I just there is there is no possibility of compromise with this subset of of the the Muslim World um just as there was no compromise with you know real Nazism you know I mean there was no compromise with with Hitler and the any any um notion that there was was um you know was profoundly dangerous as we as we later saw it all right let's touch on for a minute some of the um difficult details you know I think you you I Inuit that you feel the same way as I do about what I'm about to say I don't rely on my side of an argument to expose the flaws in the argument or to expose the exaggerations or the things that turn out not to be true so I I listen carefully to people like Max Blumenthal oh that that's where you lost me well no you lost on Max all but well let me I no I probably won't not people I abore because if if Israel ex is exaggerating how many baby heads or if there were baby heads or the details of the sexual assaults he's the one who's going to put his mind to it to find them out and if and I don't want to be ever guilty of dismissing him and then quite often some some detail turns out to be true and then he benefits Too Much from the fact that we dismissed him as opposed to saying yeah both sides always overreach both sides might always exaggerate or jump to a conclusion because they're hot blooded so I'm going to listen to what you say oh you know what Max you were right about that but everything else so I I take that stuff seriously I dismiss most of from time to time he's on to something right not in good faith but he's on to something so on this issue of for instance delivering Aid in a proper way to Gaza how do you see that has do you feel Israel has done everything in good faith well you know I don't consider myself well informed enough about the specifics of Aid and you know what has happened and not happened there what was possible and and not possible I mean generally speaking I think the following is true that Israel is now being forced to fight a defensive and and you know really existential War uh under more scrutiny than any Western power has ever had to endure for when fighting a war of any kind right so this is like the the most watched war in human history um and it's it's it's watched with a tremendous amount of bias uh to the disadvantage of Israel right so Israel is is executing a kind of Highwire act and again they're fighting people who are using a civilian population as human Shields right what what they're fighting is worse than an ordinary Guerilla War I mean every Gorilla War has some part of this this Chara characteristic which is you know the the the combatants you know hide within a civilian population and they they don't wear proper uniforms and they don't you know fight in formations that are discernable Etc and they but the hamas's use of of this uh these tactics is altogether OB seen and and designed to maximize civilian casualties right and this is this is not just Hamas this is what jihadists routinely do in their own population so um Israel's having to fight uh under conditions that are quite different from anything the us or the UK or France or any of our Western allies ever had to face and um I mean just that the deck is just stacked against it everything is spun to its disadvantage I mean just look the fact that there are more un resolutions against Israel than against all other nations combined right I mean that's the that's the environment in in which Israel is having to fight this war we're talking about an an environment wherein after immediately after October 7th before Israel had done anything the world was already blaming Israel and you know castigating it for uh even considering defending itself you know you know while you know the the bodies of families were still smoldering right I mean it's just it's it's a completely insane situation and and the fact that that so many millions of people you know can't discern the moral High Ground here is is um makes it very difficult for for um Israel not to um you not to you know not to commit uh acts that are viewed as um you know needlessly uh destructive right because the whole the effort to defend itself is viewed as as a war crime by so many millions of people right um so that's the context I think within that context Israel has almost certainly taken greater pains to mitigate the the the avoidable loss of civilian life than we are or our allies have ever had ever did in in situations that were not quite analogous right I mean we and when we went into Iraq to kill the the Islamic State we weren't fighting an existential War for you know for the defense of American civilization um you know at least at that point and uh nobody was watching to the same degree and it's just I me to say nothing of of of the you know the protests that are never that that were never going to happen and never did happen over what Assad did to you know 300,000 or so Muslims in Syria right I mean where where were where were the protests there where were the the um you know the the the the the where was the tsunami of of of um videos on social media it just it just didn't happen uh so people really seem to care when non-muslim kill Muslims and they really really care when Jews kill Muslims right that's the thing that that is just you know PR plutonium in this world um and I just think those you know those variables are things we need to ignore right I'm not you know I'm not saying that Israel hasn't committed any war crimes I I'm certainly not in a position to know whether or not they have I can only assume they have right I mean this this is a war after all right I'm sure you know it's you know are there examples of Israeli soldiers uh desecrating the dead bodies of civilians or taking trophies or have there been Mass rapes of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers I haven't heard of anything like that but if we did hear of of something like that happening um you know that would be awful and and and and Israel is precisely the type of society that would abhor that and prosecute the perpetrators right I mean that that's the difference right with the concept of a war crime is still viable uh in in Israel and and um people are are taking pains to to guard against it but that doesn't mean there aren't going to be examples of terrible behavior in time of War because I I I would expect that I just think that Israel is being held to a standard that no other Society has ever been held to and you know as to how well they're functioning by that standard you know that's that will be for history to judge yeah I agree I mean they have every incentive to do this as cleanly as possible because the only threat to them is not military military it's uh the result of some sort of bad public relations bad fat this is what is bringing um people that that's the that that's what will upend them just one last question about Israel I've heard the argument and and I actually thought about it I have my own answer to it which is um what happened in Gaza was a little unique because it was a total example of Israel asleep at the switch um they kind of left the door unlocked and Hamas came through it and to prevent something like that again in the Future No Matter How much amas swears they want to do it if they were just a little bit more attentive going forward it might not happen again or worry about it for another 50 years so why why go through all this killing all this horrible repercussions to innocent people when they could probably react to it and be sure they were not threatened with it again simply by you know redoubling their efforts to be careful yeah I don't I I mean realistically I don't know how um how confident anyone could ever be in that strategy of just you know kind of reboot to the status quo we're just going to watch the fence a little more closely than we were on October 7th um I mean you know I honestly I don't know how Israel is is ultimately viable given the status quo right I don't see how Israel can endure with Hamas or with Hezbollah in the North or with Iran ultimately right I I honestly I don't know how we avoid a a larger War here really ultimately I mean I think I think it's it's just a matter of time before Israel's at war with Hezbollah and um and I and that and that Israel and probably the United States are at war with Iran I mean I I just think jihadists have to lose across the board I me I just think this is again this is there this is true in context that have nothing to do with Israel or even the West right I think bokah Haram in Nigeria has to lose right and and uh we we all should just figure out how to engineer that defeat as quickly as possible I mean they're using children as suicide bombers again in a in a conflict that has nothing to do with us right these people are are absolute Savages um and they're making the the the the possibility of the most basic human happiness um Unthinkable uh for reasons that have nothing to do with necessity and everything to do with just the utter religious bamboozlement of a whole Generation Um you know people say you can't bomb ideas well actually you can bomb ideas right I mean it's just we have to figure out how to discredit the ideas too but there's just no question that certain people have to be militarily defeated right and and the rest of a society needs to see the example of that they have to understand that the whole project was misconceived and so you know I think the analogy to Nazi Germany or imperial Japan is a good one not not Ian it's it it's misleading we've seen that it's misleading with respect to the prospects of nation building I mean the lesson we drew from the aftermath of World War II is that we could defeat a a psychopathic enemy uh and uh magically reboot their society with the best of intentions and find in that Society a new collaborator and and you know some of our closest friends right so you know Germany and Japan are are great allies of the United States and and the UK now uh and have been for for as long as we've been alive um that's amazing given the level of hostility and the and the and the clear evil that was present in those societies uh you know that culminated in World War II um again they really they're really not two sides of the story I mean there in many cases there are two sides of a conflict but when you're looking at at those conflicts no I mean you know clearly Germany and and Japan were in the wrong in how they behaved and the the the um benevolence of our intentions our ultimate intentions with respect to those societies were revealed in how we re helped rebuild them right I mean we were you know we could have just gone into Germany and started raping and killing everyone in sight if that's what we were about right um yeah so the lesson I would draw from that is not that it's going to be easy to go into a society like uh you know Syria or Iran or any anywhere else and rebuild it along those lines because we we've witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq just how forlorn that project is um for reasons that I I do think are still somewhat difficult to understand but have a lot to do with with religious factionalism um but the lesson I think we should draw is that that there is no uh there's no alternative really to unconditional surrender right there's to real defeat a defeat that is in whose moral implications and political implications are truly indelible right and and and and one can't lie about what actually happened there lie to oneself about what actually happened there and we need to demonstrate that with with respect to jihadism everywhere jihadism seeks to flourish I I agree with you about a larger War kind of being inevitable because um you know prior to this and I was looking it up online there were many articles about Hamas doesn't want an allout War Iran doesn't want an allout war and there was a kind of Reliance on an equation of a psychological equation of deterrence they would never I know the worst case scenario but they would never do that because they know what we would do to them right and now we know either because they can't calculate what we would do to them or because they don't care what we would do to them that they will do it and now all of a sudden now all of a sudden the rockets in the north have to be viewed differently what if they push the button and they're all Unleashed at the same time what I worry about is um forget about an atom bomb just a dirty bomb just some enriched uranium it can they can we really count on it that they can't smuggle that into Gaza and can we any longer say no the gazans would never bring a dirty bomb into Israel because they know what we would do to them no I think we know they would do it so we can't live Israel can't live with that threat anymore and um I and another issue of course is what the communication of weakness and how that would be interpreted throughout the world and in Bolden enemies but I think the first part is really it's a tough thing to to accept but Israel can't live with the worst case scenarios anymore that it thought it could because the equation has shown to be false it's failed deterrence won't stop it yeah I know what you think well a doctrine of martyrdom changes everything you know these are these people are not deter along the the normal you know game theoretic rational lines because death is not a problem and and it's it's really not a problem and and it's really important that we take these their word it's really it's always been hard for me and I'm sure I speak for millions of people to really accept and and internalize that it's really not a problem for them you think it's just Bluster or whatever it is but nobody wants to die but you've seemed to be able to understand that no they're not just saying it it's real it's very hard for me to to to understand yeah I mean this is something I've been dealing with since September 11 2001 just the the incredulity of ordinary secular people when you when you talk about the um the sincerity of the of the um you know the the psychological and and spiritual confession one here is on the part of jihadist again there there are many versions of it but you know one phrase is we love death more than the infidels love life right that's not Bluster right it's not and and what's amazing to me it's been it's amazed me for now you know a quarter of a century is that even suici a suicide bombing on the part of someone who had lots of reasons to live right not a desperately depressed person but somebody who who had you know other opportunities in life and yet you you you read their backstory and they had a wife and they had a family and they had economic prospects and nonetheless they decided that the FF fulfillment of their whole life project was you know best accomplished by strapping on some explosives and blowing themselves on up on a bus or you know flying a plane into a building or whatever it was what's always amazed me is that that rhetorical flourish like I you know here you want to see how much I believe what I just said watch this bam isn't enough for secular liberal types who just can't get their minds around the fact someone really believes in Paradise in this world but millions of people really believe in paradise and it's a it's a uh profoundly dehumanizing set of beliefs that lead leads them to this this this particular notion of martyrdom and and the kinds of sacrifices that uh it's rational to make and would be IR irrational not to make if you really believe these things things I mean martyrdom is the is the only direct way to go straight to paradise bypassing the day of judgment it's the only guaranteed way to save yourself uh I mean it's the ultimate career opportunity if you believe these things and um so we have to we have to um make this belief system look as unseemly and pointlessly destructive and bound to lose as it you know can be made to to seem in this world and we need to figure out other ways to bracket it and undermine it you know theologically and that that work that's for the the Muslim Scholars to do I mean that unfortunately the tools they have at their disposal are are perilously thin uh because the you know the doctrine is pretty damn clear uh you know in in the texts and um so good luck with that guys but in the meantime we need to kill jihadists I mean that I just I see absolutely no alternative to that um and so the idea that Israel can should should suffer their company uh in perpetuity just trying to figure out how to build a a taller fence um I just don't see how that works again as you point out given the increasing spread of destructive technology I mean it's just it's it's not it's getting easier for small numbers of people to destroy the lives of of you know much larger numbers of people it's not getting harder right and and defense the the unfortunately the a the asymmetry here is I think always going to be present which is it's easier to break things than to fix them it's easier to play offense than defense um and yeah you know I mean the one thing you can put some store in is not the humanity of jihadists but their powerful attach to religious symbols so for instance I I would be very surprised if a jihadist group was willing to do anything that might harm the alaxa mosque right like that would be really counterproductive they're not going to they're not going to Target the mosque they're not going to blow you know they're not going to blow it up they're not going to cover it with with radiation and make it you know uninhabitable for 10,000 years right so I think you're very safe if you're close to the mosque right on some level um that those are the kinds of of varities that you can put some stock in um because the because things like mosques are things that these people really care about far more than they care about the lives of their children you know I just we got to get off it but to add to this pessimistic picture it just occurs me you know you can compare it to Nazism but Nazism was not a supernatural belief it was a practical ideology that proved itself a failure so people could walk away from it in in a relatively easily right as opposed to Islam or this radical Islam which is is comes with a supernatural stamp of approval and any sort of failure is not proof of its failure right it's just uh tribulations along the way so how do you convince somebody to a point you know up to a point you know so Nazism really was a kind of um mysticism of race in a sense I mean it was it was more religious than than people give it credit for I mean people often describe the Nazis as atheists but no I mean they were you know the Quasi Christian Fanatics in many respects and they were also just kind of you know conspiracy adult lunatics and meth addicts and I mean they were just they were they were not a a rational group of people and they're they had they created a new kind of religion around Notions of blood and soil and you know you know you know pollutions of race and Etc um and so it you know it was a weird cultic phenomenon not not otherworldly in any kind of normal religious sense but but still not quite rational and uh somewhat mystical and weird um so yeah I but I take your point I think it it's harder to walk away from the core tenants of Islam I think they have to be recontextualized I think you know at a minimum all of the people who could be prone to be to becoming islamists and jihadists need to be convinced that well if you know if Islam is ultimately going to Triumph it's probably no time soon and it's quite rational in the meantime in the you know intervening centuries to live like peaceful sane individuals who who are enjoying uh orderly lives uh in peace with their neighbors you know in the meantime and maybe maybe it's all going to be about claiming the the world for the one true God ultimately but it's not rational for any present generation to spend most of their time fixated on that when life is getting better and better for everyone you know life is now so good let's say you know in 10 years or 100 that no one's impatient for Paradise right and no one's and and the people who are really um committed to just throwing over everything in favor of you know a new caliphate they begin to look you know they they're they're immediately recognized as the deranged cultists uh and malcontents uh and Weirdos that they are um and they're either you know forced to reform or they're you know somebody some of their co-religionists deal with them right it's just we it's like what do you do I mean there is some there has to be some process I know has to be maybe there doesn't have to be but it seems reasonable that there would be some process analogous to what happened to Christianity since the 14th century which can truly mitigate the fanaticism that we see in the Muslim world right I what what's what's so damaging now is that you know even even mainstream Muslims Muslims who have no no no real connection to jihadism they're so slow to condemn it they're so slow to to um I mean basically the the the they can they can be counted upon to take the side of of Muslims in any conflict with non-muslims no matter how sociopathic the behavior of the Muslims right uh that is it's that that formula has to break down right I mean we what we need are 2 billion Muslims who will Who will get out of their own identity politics and recognize that they have a stake in a pluralistic World wherein your identity doesn't TR Trump your your moral sanity right and if you have you know I can tell you that as a Jew I can tell you if there was a a group of fanatical Jews who were the equivalent of Hamas or the equivalent of the Islamic State I would condemn them as fully as I've ever condemned Hamas or the Islamic State right I mean there'd be no there'd be no part of me as a my identity as a Jew where I would where I'd say oh you know well I got to sort of take the Jewish side in that crazy you know you know in in these suicidal atrocities that that I just saw committed you know no it's just like identity politics is poison right and religious identities are poison I mean they just they they they prevent say [Music] thinking in moral terms uh reliably prevent it so but you know to to come back to your question there has to be some process where we we're not routinely dealing with the Christians of the 14th century anymore right I mean Christianity suffered a you know repeated centuries of collision with modernity and and scientific reasoning and secular politics and you know capitalism and and you pluralistic democracies and it just it just got beaten into submission in most respects now it's not to say you can't find totally crazy Christians who want to kill homosexuals Etc but you tend to find them in subsaharan Africa right you don't you're not mostly finding them in the west I me yes there are Pockets there are fanatical Christian Cults but again they're just fanatical Cults that no one has to really worry about much um and certainly not by comparison with what you had to routinely worry about in The 14th Century I I fear that the the process might be the discredited one which was the idea actually more so in my opinion than Weapons of Mass destructions behind the war in Iraq which is bring in an open Society with free speech and rule of law and prosperity and that would be the the antidote to this sort of thing as it seems to be the antidote when Muslim people come to America and their intensity which I seems to fade away with within the the the atmosphere of a free and open society which was our aim it's discredited I don't think we'll be trying that again anytime soon but I wonder if that's really not the only thing that might have a chance of working anyway let's talk about identity politics um sure so so one of my uh now you've you tell me if this is wrong I I think you've devoted your life uh the last 15 years uh against the scourge of identity politics more than any other issue that's motivated you uh the only other issue I've seen you that bent out of shape about has been Trump um but here's the rub and I was just for the record I was I was very much against Trump not really for the reasons of his character and lying which um I know matter to you a great deal not that they don't matter to me but mostly because I felt he was unhinged and erratic and couldn't act in his own self-interest and if we had a crisis Isis this was not the kind of guy we want in charge of it and we sort of saw that during put that under character I mean I think I think that's yeah those are the character traits I that most worry me yes yeah that particular character but and and Co we almost saw this disaster although I was even a little bit wrong I think in the end his mismanagement of Co didn't manage nearly as didn't matter nearly as much as I thought it was going to but I wouldn't want Trump handling Ukraine and Israel at the same time and Mal just I can't imagine it however in retrospect I think that that Supreme Court decision which ended racial preferences in uh University admissions both legally and in the atmosphere have cut off the blood supply to Identity politics which will now begin to wither and die to mix an analogy um and the factual would have been a democratically a left-wing Supreme Court which would have taken these cases and guaranteed identity politics for the next 50 years so in retrospect would you be willing to entertain the idea that it wasn't worth the risk prospectively but retroactively it's a tougher call yeah well I I share your um satisfaction that that I that identity politics has been um curtailed in in some ways I I think the biggest uh defeat really is it just the what's happened optically after October 7th I mean those those hearings before congress with the university presidents I mean I just think the whole Dei regime is crumbling and you know barring barring but you know here here the irony comes swinging back barring the reelection of trump will crumble if Trump if we get Trump again in November I think this the pendulum of Sanity now swings back out into into uh you know full identitarian moral Panic on the left um and we'll deal with it not legally sanctioned anymore not legally sanctioned anymore we're not going to see any more uh covid and suggesting give it only to black people or uh disaster relief only for people of color and that like that's that's done right but I do think yeah yeah I mean you know I think that's all helpful but I worry that we will just see you know more accus you know accusations of racism Etc everywhere all the time as long as Trump is is President right and and and all of the derangement that brings um but short of short of trump being reelected I do yeah I'm hopeful that we have we have witnessed Peak woke and that the pendulum is swinging back and that um we will have you know ultimately we will have more normal institutions and more normal politics and um more normal media and we'll um you know we'll look back on on you know everything that happened on the left as a kind of moral Panic right in the over the last decade because I think it was right I mean we we just to remind people I mean we you know we have because we've all been grown kind of um numb to to the shrieking of the present but for for the last decade or so left of center in our politics and in all of our institutions I mean the most elite institutions Academia science um Hollywood uh the media everyone has been acting like not only have we made no progress on issues of race in particular but this is one of the the most dire moments in our history like this is a you know like this is the emergency is at 11 you know right now we're living in an intolerably racist Society this is you know after we had a two-term black president um you know you know after all the G obvious gains that have been made and after a Dei regime that was instantiated apped such that it was true to say that in almost any High status job or school or any other perch one could seek in our society it would be a positive advantage to be black not a disadvantage right I mean looking at you applicants of similar qualifications right the you would you would absolutely want to be black applying for that job at you know the carnegi foundation or or that that placs at you know in Harvard Medical School or wherever I mean it's just it it's just been a malignant fantasy to suggest otherwise for years right um but you know I I do I do think that that de you know Dei has gone too far I mean I share the I I understand and I share the moral and political impulse to to redress the obvious wrongs of the past somehow right and the obvious wrongs of the past have a have a um you know are still with us right in some in some basic sense I mean just you just in in economic terms you mean just look at the the the the disparities in wealth between white and black families on average in this country right there surely racism and racist policies um account for for the that disparity to some degree but the question is what to do about that now what what do we do going forward to to to create a truly you know just society and it can't be and I think for a long time it has has been obvious that it can't be to Institute a a whole set of racist policies aimed in the other direction right where we're now racist against Asians or you know white people or it's just it's um it's obscene right it's understandable that we've made these mistakes but it is when you look at the details obscene and obviously unfair and obviously counterproductive and and we're still and I and this is truly ironic conducive to producing more racism right I mean this is I the nightmare scenario is really that you know you you go to a hospital with some some emercy and the doctor walks in and he or she is black and your first thought is I'm now in the presence of a doctor or a surgeon who is less qualified than most because I happen to know that the standards of admission to medical school and the standards of promotion throughout that through the apparatus of a hospital have been systematically reduced for African-Americans for years and years for as long as this person could have possibly Poss been educated that is [ __ ] awful to have to think about right and that is so that's racism on but but it's the given the nature of the policies unfortunately those are completely rational thoughts right it's and the op the the opposite thought is also rational if you see an Asian come through the door you think you know you okay this is a person who has been held to um unfairly high standards in admission to under their undergraduate college into admission to medical school we know what Harvard did to the Asians we know that Asians had to have you know score 400 points higher on the SAT to have to be at parody with black applicants um okay this guy or gal is a superstar because and I I can know that by just looking at the color of their skin right that is awful right we do not want to live in that world and uh so we have to figure out and so so I think we're pulling back from the brink there and you know what sort of policies we Implement so as to give you know everyone every opportunity they can they can uh make make good use of and um we try to mitigate you know some of the the inequities that are obvious at the starting line I mean I think a lot of these interventions happen to H have to happen as early as possible they're not they can't happen at The Med medical school level they have have to happen in preschool right but yes we we know what we know the punchline politically we want to live in a world where the color of a person's skin or their ethnic background or their religious Identity or their height or their you know the color of their hair or the color of their eyes none of this matters right we we're already there with respect to hair color and eye color right those are not politically Salient or morally Salient variables we want everything to be like hair color and eye color and and the question is how do we get there the first thing we do to get there is we steamroll over and and otherwise embarrass all the imbeciles who think that that goal is now illegitimate and that we want to enshrine identitarian difference for all time right we want to make the most of our racial difference for all time these people exist some of them right for the New York Times they're they're all morons right and we should not well let me say s you you made a career you said before though this is purely rational and that's really everything you've gotten in hot water for and been called names and racist and Ben Affleck is probably still huffing and puffing from that Bill Maher opinion did but what they do is that you try to and um I heard you with Ezra kleene who you know exasperated me you're you're making um difficult points which are but which they are rational points and then they attack you personally in a way which I just think is Unbecoming for for so many of these people who are smart that's just a little comment so I listen the prerequisite I think you'll agree for a just Society or for the society we want to see will be pretty easy I don't know how to get there is that at the sixth grade level you see no drastic differences in the reading and math scores across races at that point everything else will take care of of itself everything everything will work out and if you can't if you see kids and we we know there's states with like 30 districts where not a single kid can pass a grade level test what do you expect the outcome to be so when they're adults we're going to start complaining that they didn't get the jobs and start putting them but it's it's it's absurd right all right um where do you where do you fall on the Tik Tock issue and wrap it up I more quick yeah well I have never truth is I've never experienced Tik Tok directly I mean I guess I've seen Tik Tok videos exported to YouTube but I I've never had the app on my phone um you know I you know rumor has it that the algorithm is uh amazingly effective and addictive and it cly yeah it's almost certainly being gamed by the CCP so as to uh derange us I mean you know again this is just I've just consume these rumors uh from somewhere but um you know apparently in China Tik Tok will just just spread one you know engineering video or otherwise educational video after the other to to its population and you know in the US you're just you're you're basically um getting brain damag we were entertaining ourselves to death and then you get a little fondness for Hamas thrown in there along with the dance videos um I mean I just think it's I view it as a um I think the notion of of reciprocity kind of cuts through the morass here you know the fact that we can't Market similar products in China should resolve it it's like you know we we shouldn't let China sell anything to us that they won't let us sell to them on some level I mean I think that that would that could be a way to to just um sound like Trump yeah yeah I mean so I just I think that's we have to deal with China in in some way and you know we have you know Trump has not has not been wrong altogether about China I mean China has made it a habit to um enshrine certain uh unjustifiable asymmetries between our societies I mean they steal our intellectual property just you know just it seems to be there for the taking and they just they uh they knock they pirate everything that that they want um I don't know why we should have ever tolerated that but it it's just it's a um um I mean the the thing that I mean this this this actually has implications for our relationship to to Islam as well the there there are many places that have there are many societies that have um survived based on certain happy accidents I mean for instance there's so many Muslim states that are you know wealthy simply because they've been able to pull their wealth out of the ground right I mean there kind of the oil curse right they have not had to be responsive to their their population demographically and and most importantly they they haven't had to produce anything of value that the rest of the world wants and will pay for they they don't they don't have any intellectual property apart from you know these a single book uh you know coupled together in the in the seventh century um and that they haven't they haven't been forced to experience how untenable uh all that is in at this moment in history right because they again in the case of um the Gulf States they've been able to pull money out of the ground in in the case of china uh it's been a you know we you know we thought we were going to nudge it toward democracy by simply uh playing nice with it economically for so many decades and then helping to lift it out of poverty which obviously we did um in that sense it's success story but it's not a success story it did not become politically moderate the way we expected um so yeah you know the fact that we we they offer cheap labor and pirate everything else is you know that that ultimately that is going to be an untenable strategy too going forward right we're going to onore a lot of what we you know coov taught us that we want to onshore more than than we had um the labor is probably going to if it's not currently cheaper it might be ultimately cheaper in Mexico or elsewhere um yeah I mean you know unless China can produce stuff that the world really wants uh based on their own creativity they will you know things won't be as good for them going forward so I just think the the incentives are such if if if you yeah get you know barring the the the unhappy or happy accidents like you know certain countries just sitting on top of vast oil wealth for the for a time um we need to live in a world where all of our incentives are aligned and and you really you get rewarded to the degree that you play well with others and produce value in their lives uh and and where that breaks down and where where people are able to game the system differently uh I think we you know well-intentioned people need to become more alert to th those systems of bad incentives and figure out how to correct for them right we and we we should you know we should be slow to reward obvious obvious Bad actors uh simply because it's you know it may be pragmatic in the near- term to do that right and we've we've obviously played a a a very um dangerous and at times very cynical game what you collaborating with you with you know with people who are clearly bad on the world stage but because we thought it was a necessity we we we did that I mean I you know I I agree with everything you said I'm I'm I'm so reflexively first amendment and anti- um you know regulating uh what a private company does but I have to admit it scares the [ __ ] out of me that there's this pipeline from China into my daughter's brain especially now at a time when there's a kind of psychological war against a fragile fragile Jewish psyche for a child like my daughter I have no real way of knowing she's 12 how she's interpreting it how the peer pressure of it all affects her and to know that a a foreign country has this pipeline to her brain and they're using it for geostrategic reasons uh is not okay with me I I don't know you just the fact that it's aimed at children we usually allow much more regulation much more heavy-handedness when it comes to protecting children as opposed to adults and this squarely is aimed at children which is I think enough of a rationale to at least overcome a lot of the First Amendment things all right can I can I got time for one more yeah go for it yeah um hallucinogenics I heard you speak about hallucinogenics and you had me tempted to try hallucinogenics I never tried them but there are two things my father who was a very perceptive guy was you know in his 30s during the 60s had said to me once when I was young he anybody he ever knew who took LSD in some way he felt they changed in some way not necessarily for the worst but just changed I should hope so right well permanently and then I saw a study just a couple weeks ago going around Twitter I don't know if it's reliable or not you would you would know that um there's some evidence of of actual plasticity going on that after certain hallucinogenic drugs the brain actually stays different in some way and um all this scares the [ __ ] out of me and I'm wondering um in a weird way like the v's database you know Tucker Carlson God forbid to compared trer Carlson was telling people to make decisions based on self-reporting of people taking drugs whether or not your personal positive experience with these things um is enough for me to go on in in in in trying them well you know I I don't think my experience is necessarily enough and you know there is a fair amount of research at this point uh that suggests that uh in you know controlled and and you know benign conditions uh there's a lot of promise with you know for these drugs you know in the normal case I mean there are people who I who I think shouldn't take psychedelics and there are certainly conditions in which I I I don't think anyone should take psychedelics um and uh I mean the truth is for for the for the novice psychonaut I I think I would I would recommend MDMA which is not technically a psychedelic before I would recommend psilocybin or LSD to anyone I I think I think the the prospect of having a a truly bad experience you know stabilizing an experience an experience you regret having had on MDMA is is very very low um you know and there's some contraindications with it as a drug I mean you know it's not as physiologically it's not as benign as as LSD or cybin I mean LC and COC cybin while they you know they run uh a much greater risk of of producing a a scary experience um you know just physically you know you know pharmacologic logically they are are you truly benign drugs um MDMA is you know you know in in most cases is I think safe to take you know a certain number of times but you know there's there there's definitely some story of its neurotoxicity which I I I think I can't totally dismiss and you know there's also some question as to you know if you're buying it on the street you know are you really getting what you think you're getting and and all of that um but have you have you ever taken MDMA you I I did one time and I had I had a very pleasant experience with it but I was also a little scary for it was the only time I'd ever experienced a drug marijuana alcohol where I realized if something comes my way right now that I have to deal with I will not be able to like overcome it like like and that I felt very vulnerable in that way and I haven't taken it since but it was it was awesome yeah so I mean again there's some question as to whether or not what you got is is MDMA or pure MDMA and right so so like the sourcing is an issue but like you know if you could get if if you could overcome that hurdle I you know in the right context I think it's um you know there's a lot of spiritual ethical growth that is possible in on the basis of that experience because it's it's just um you know it's not necessarily representative of everything you want out of you know your conscious life but it is it's um from a kind of a med ative point of view it is kind of like Rocket Fuel I mean really like like if you if if you have framed by the right thoughts and the right intentions you know put in your you know if if someone were going to contemplate you know how much they love uh other people how Greatful they are to just be alive and to have a family and to I mean just you point your thoughts in that direction on MDMA what you get is a you know a a 20 Megaton burst of of of love and and gratitude that is it's well worth having it's well worth experiencing right and and it does it does leave a residue and you know it's a residue you can then work with right it's something there's something to do on that basis you can say you can definitely have the same kinds of experience with LSD and sisin but um they they are so um uh distorting of perception and you know ideation in so many other ways you know for for good or for ill that it one's you know one's trajectory is far less predictable right like so you know if um uh I mean in some ways they're more powerful than MDMA I mean there's much more of a kind of a a self-transcending possibility with them but there's also just more there it's more of a spin of the roulette wheel where you just can't fully control the experience you're going to have so I you know I'm I'm never eager to push someone to take any drug you made it you made it sound really good Sam yeah I know I know but you know there are caveats but you know with MDMA I really I do feel like you know mo for most people most of the time you know you know certainly unless they have some kind of contraindication like I don't know what it would be probably high blood pressure or or something you know cardiac um I just think you know it can be truly a rewarding experience for for for most people before you go I do have one other question I'm sorry been ask for for years um abortion now I I read today or I heard today something you said about abortion which very much as usual to be honest conforms to my way of thinking which was that at some the court could have constructed if they were honest some opinion which said that in in a certain early period of time any objection to this is religious and we have a rule against religious laws I don't know what that ear period of time is but I think at some empirically at some early period of weeks it's clear that only religious people have a problem with it and therefore I'd be comfortable but that wasn't really the argument that was made but science in someway has always been the enemy of Rover's Wade trimesters are some sort of approximation for something we believe is going on but at some point there will be some physiological test testable event that we can say when this happens we're going to protect this as a human life and before it happens we're not and of course pills will always be like they're like the pharmaceutical clo hanger abortions right they'll always be able but it terms of a matter of law what as a neurolog neuroscientist where would be the scientific if you had perfect knowledge of what's going on inside of fetus's inside a fetus a brain or whatever where would you draw a line to protect the fetus as a life yeah well it's a hard question and it's it's not a question we necessarily will ever be able to answer in practice right I mean in principle maybe we can answer it but it's um it may always seem arbitrary where we draw the line in the same way that it seems arbitrary where we draw draw the line for other things like I mean the fact you know like you know why why do we let kids have driver's licenses at 16 right like is it's just it's an arbitrary cut off we're just we're judging most 15y olds I'll give you a better one we let babies we have baby diaper commercials with naked babies running around when you're and at some point wait a second that's pornography nobody can and so you know but you have to and and both sides are correct they're not the same thing so you draw a line right anyway go ahead sorry so it might always seem arbitrary it might always be arbit arrary um but that the the arbitrary line it will hopefully map to something more or less intelligible I mean so so I think the um any understanding of of human development you know in utero that suggested that there was some point of demarcation where a fetus could experience uh pain right and you know the conscious experience of pain um well then that would be you know a moment where we would have a um you know an ethical obligation to prevent uh you know the experience of being painfully murdered right I mean like that's just that would be bad if we knew we were you know uh killing a fetus in in a in a um some way that just amounted to being you know you know you're essentially you're draw drawing and quartering an infant right I it's just ghastly right so and the and the notion of antiz a fetus to kill it is is gruesome right yes yeah so all of that you know it's understandable that all of that would make us uncomfortable and and probably should make us uncomfortable um but once we push further back you know on the timeline and we get to a an organism that is not even discernably human apart from looking at its chromosomes right I mean like there was this one gag that some uh uh pro-choice person played on a talk show I think I remember I might have this somewhat um garbled but I think they were on like a talk show with a a um a pro-life person and they held up a picture of a of a fetus you know at whatever stage but it was it was you know L did not look like a a entirely like a human baby at this point and um uh he said you know like he sort of invited the he he he baited the the pro-life person the pro-life person said all I can tell you is you know I know that that is a you know that is a child of God or whatever and the and the pro pro-choice person well that that's um you know that's interesting because this is a picture of a of a baby dolphin right you know it's like you know like there's no at a certain stage there's their um our concern really isn't rationally targeting the possible human suffering of a human being right and it's not enough to say that this is a potential human being or this would be a human being if it only persisted in the right right under the right conditions because again you know this is a point I've made that you know with with genetic engineering every cell in the human body that has a nucleus is a potential human being I mean if you if you scratch your nose you are culling the lives of of thousands of potential human beings because we could just you know these are just as viable given the right manipulations these are just these cells are just as viable as a fertilized ovam right so it it can't be the the right answer can't be at the moment of conception this uh single cell uh inherits all of the the the ethical ritas of a fully intact human being who uh you would be a moral monster to to mistreat or kill right it's just it just can't that just can't be the case and to to assert dogmatically that it simply is the case is a religious precept right and and so so where we draw the line between we're not worried about single cells in in a Petri dish uh and INF fanticide that's that's difficult and and it might always it might always seem arbitrary well you're make you're making a case then for the Democratic process to decide you know but uh I um I would say at the point where it feels pain I now I don't want to see women go to jail for long periods of time it's kind of like drugs like you don't actually want to put people in jail for taking drugs but I'm sympathetic to making them illegal in certain cases because you just don't want to encourage people to do it it's there's no good answer to that anytime I see somebody in jail for having done drugs I say this is crazy can't put somebody in jail for taking drugs but well how about legalizing heroin no I don't want to do that either so I don't know how how you penalize it but you know um well well I think tech technology might change things it's it's like you know before there were seat belts nobody wore them because they didn't exist but once there are seat belts you know you you you and and you're a parent and you don't strap your kid in and your kid goes flying Through a Windshield you know you're you're unconscionably negligent right and it's just that that that that moral judgment is only made possible by the invention of the seat belt right so there's going to be some breakthrough with respect to um you know how early we can detect pregnancies or you how early we we can we can how much we can discern the the possible you know subjectivity of a fetus um how easy it becomes to um how VI you know whether whether a fetus at a certain stages viable I mean that has changed so much I mean like the fetuses you know earlier and earlier are actually VI viable right so the line of viability changes um yeah I mean I you know obviously you're on firm if you have if you become pregnant and you don't want the child um there is a a completely blameless path open to you which is to to uh deliver the child and and give it to a family that wants it you know adoption is a is a is a great answer to that and um you know we could make that whole process much more attractive and and easier for people somehow you know and um but yeah I like every other question in life religious dogmatism doesn't really help here it doesn't it doesn't illuminate anything it just ends the conversation I suspect it's going to settle into a a a status whatever you call status quo that is um not I suspect it will settle into a reality Which is far less upsetting than what people are worried about I think the red states are not going to they might make noises about it in the beginning but they don't want their kids being forced to have children it's kind of like they say let's repeal Obamacare repeal Obamacare and then when they had the chance to repeal Obamacare they actually didn't go through with it Kansas voted to keep abortion Ireland voted to allow abortion I I kind of think it's going to be all right I know you don't agree but I I'm not really worried that it's going to be terrible well I'm I'm not worried that it will be terrible for um people who have access to to sufficient resources right I I so I think it's it's more terrible for the poor and the desperate you know as as everything invariably is but I mean this is a case where it really is just you know it penalizes the people who can't you know can't easily go to another state get a necessary abortion if that's what in fact they they want to do I just kind of kind of feel like between the mail order and I don't know I I for some people it will but the Rover's Wade was such like you're you know as you always say you rationally it couldn't hold up it made no sense and you just can't expect that to hold so yeah no this is something we really care about we'll figure out how to legislate it yeah yeah you know I think that that's the RO roie Wade was always vulnerable you know I think there's a tremendous amount of hypocrisy and peer pressure on the part of the people who claim they don't want anybody to be able to get an abortion at conception let's see how it all uh yeah pans out you saw there was an article yesterday which we had an alltime record of abortions last year so really I'll email it to you afterwards so you know I don't know what that means but it hasn't been a crash in a number of abortions all right Sam Harris I'm not going to keep you any longer actually I want to ask you one question Nome just to turn the tables on you so given your um unique vantage point in the The Comedy world do you think the the pendulum of of wokeness is swinging back in in that part of culture I mean how how is it for comedians these days to to function in U on stage and off I I think it absolutely has swung back swung back in reality it's also swung back in the um the kind of uh Corporate America coming to the realization that there wasn't really anything to be afraid of in the beginning that it was kind of like The Wizard of Oz pay no attention to that man behind the curtain for instance when Spotify didn't do anything when it turned out that Joe Rogan had said the nword and even worse compared made a joke about black people planted of the Apes you know life went on right um there's all sorts of Netflix stood by Dave Chappelle um and this kind of uh exposed what was really going on further I'll just give you related um you know how much abuse I took when I let Louis CK back on stage and you know horrible emails and threats and had employees wearing a comedy sell t-shirt spit on on the subway I mean this this was what the righteous people thought was appropriate but more recently I wrote a piece defending um Yasha Monk on these um on some charges that were made against him and it was read by tens of thousands of people I did not get one single critical email of anybody accusing me of being apologist or I'm trying not to go into the details as to provoke anybody but it was striking W how different the atmosphere was to take a unwoke position now as it was just a few years ago I don't know what your experience is yeah well my experience is uh powerfully um constrained by the fact that I'm no longer on social media so I I don't see anything of that sort and it's it's just it's an amazing it's amazing to just neither know nor care about what's happening oh and also Shane Gillis Andrew Schultz these people I don't know if you saw sh gillis's recent special or or even I I just saw his return to SNL but yeah yeah he says the r word on SNL and and makes fun of his his Down syndrome family this is the same SNL that fired him for making for an Asian accent a few years ago it's different uh well that's good to hear so yeah you know keep it up over there you're you're um you're fighting the good fight on on the on the the funny side of the the battlefield well as are you and you and you really have I mean I I know this is not for the show but I I relistened to that interview that Ezra Klein did with you years already sorry for that that's painful I I haven't heard that in years but don't don't listen to it yeah and just the bad faith and the way he was trying to back you into Corners that would make you look bad rather than allow you to in a good faith way lay out you know the rational arguments it uh it just it I was screaming it it's reprehensible and you go through this on issue after issue as I'm sure you are now in your stridden not stri Ardent defense of Israel here and as as Brett Stevens said the other day I heard him say that you're National Treasure I I was uh moved by him saying that Sam because very few people have that kind of Courage people are cowed I don't know what how how you were born that way what motivates you but you know it's very important it's very important well thank you it's it's an honor to speak with you about all these issues and um thank you for what you're doing as well you're you I I have the courageous stands you've taken on a variety of topics have have not gone unnoticed so uh keep that up all right Sam thank you very very much um when you're New York please drop by and you get there from time to time yeah all right

Channel: Comedy Cellar USA

Views: 196,356

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Id: 659F5L_uE9M

Length: 88min 24sec (5304 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024