#477 — More From Sam: Iran's Unraveling, The Gaza Information War, AI-Generated Music, and More

Summary

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Making Sense with Sam Harris

Episode #477 – More From Sam: Iran's Unraveling, The Gaza Information War, AI-Generated Music, and More
Release Date: May 26, 2026
Host: Sam Harris

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Episode Overview

This special “More from Sam” installment is a wide-ranging Q&A recorded live with subscribers, featuring Sam Harris’s unfiltered takes on ongoing geopolitical crises, media controversies, and the state of American politics. Key topics include U.S. policy and military posture regarding Iran, the information battle over Gaza, controversial coverage from Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and more. As always, Sam combines brutal honesty with analytic rigor, offering sobering assessments and challenging prevailing narratives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reflections on Recent Tour and Community Building (00:25–03:58)

• Tour Wrap-Up: Sam reflects on having finished a long speaking tour, noting the evolution of his talk over nearly a year:
  • “I'm done repeating myself on this particular set of topics.” (Sam Harris, 01:16)
  • He also shares a lighthearted moment about meeting comedian Jordan Jensen and Neil Brennan, highlighting industry camaraderie.
• Community Platform Update: Announcement regarding the new private online community for subscribers, with pending app development:
  • Debate on whether a web-based format encourages more thoughtful, less impulsive conversation.

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2. U.S.–Iran Conflict: Unraveling Strength and Credibility (03:58–11:45)

• Current Situation Assessment:
  • Sam offers a grim outlook on U.S. actions in Iran, emphasizing the showcasing of American “weakness and incompetence,” and diminishing military and soft power.
  • “Trump and his incompetent friends... have bragged and boasted and bluffed and then blinked and then blinked and then blinked again. All her [America’s] bluffs were called. They've showcased American weakness and incompetence to a degree that I think no one could have rationally feared.” (Sam Harris, 04:32)
• Worst vs. Second-Worst Outcomes:
  • Worst-case, per Sam, would have been a full-scale ground war lost by the U.S., but he argues the current reality—loss of deterrence and strategic credibility—is only slightly less disastrous:
    • “To lose the war with boots on the ground would be worse than the war we seem to be in the process of losing.” (Sam Harris, 07:04)
• Regime Change as the Only 'Victory':
  • Harris asserts that only genuine regime change could be considered victory, but sees that as increasingly unlikely. He emphasizes the paradox that, despite inflicting significant harm, the U.S. actually weakened its position and emboldened its adversaries:
    • “Regime change was the only thing to hope for and it had to have been the real purpose of this whole exercise.” (Sam Harris, 10:31)
    • “[Iran] can hold 20% of the energy economy globally hostage and we can’t do anything about it.” (Sam Harris, 05:43)
• Soft Power and Public Perception:
  • Deep concern about the international message sent by Trump administration actions, and skepticism about American resolve to defend allies elsewhere (e.g., Taiwan).

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3. Trump Administration Corruption and American Institutional Decay (12:24–15:37)

• Trumps and the IRS Lawsuit:
  • Explanation of a recent case where the Trumps sued the IRS only to drop the lawsuit and settle in a way that bars the IRS from future action against them—a process Sam derides as “settled with themselves.”
    • “The fact that it's written like one of his truth social posts... all of this is mortifying to us as a country.” (Sam Harris, 12:51)
• Comparisons and Consequences:
  • Sam repeatedly calls Trump’s methods “kleptocratic” and likens the administration to a “banana republic,” expressing incredulity at the erosion of basic American institutional norms:
    • “This is the intentional, you know, self defenestration of the world’s only superpower.” (Sam Harris, 14:12)
    • “If this were the one thing he did... just imagine Obama or any other normal president doing any one of these things and it's unthinkable.” (Sam Harris, 15:07)

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4. Gaza, Nicholas Kristof, and the Limits of Journalism (15:37–21:35)

• Kristof’s NYT Investigation:
  • Responding to Nicholas Kristof’s controversial New York Times piece alleging severe abuse of prisoners by Israel, Sam offers a nuanced critique.
  • He credits Noam Dworman’s podcast take as highly accurate and summarizes key ideas:
    • There’s a tragic, expected level of abuse in prisons, especially in war, and horrific allegations sometimes emerge plausibly.
    • However, Sam sees Kristof as a “useful idiot,” insufficiently rigorous in his journalism and too prone to being manipulated by anti-Western or Islamist narratives.
      • “Nicholas Kristof is obviously a useful idiot, right, who did not do the work of a proper journalist... he gets all of this wrong all the time.” (Sam Harris, 16:34)
  • Sam cautions against denying even extreme charges outright, noting historic precedents and possibility, but stresses any abuses should be prosecuted.
    • “All of it if true, all of it should be prosecuted. It's all awful, it's all illegal. It's also understandable that it would happen at some rate, given the nature of the situation...” (Sam Harris, 20:35)
• Moral Comparisons and the Information War:
  • Harris emphasizes that, unlike their adversaries (e.g., Hamas), Western societies generally investigate and punish abuses:
    • “There's a difference between us and our enemies, and the difference is the most important difference morally to keep in view in our lifetime.” (Sam Harris, 21:20)
  • Critiques the NYT for (allegedly) timing Kristof’s piece to offset major reporting on Hamas’s atrocities, suggesting media ideological capture.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On American Power:
  • “We put a game show host in charge of the world's only superpower. We put a Fox and Friends host in charge of our military. What did we expect was going to happen?” (Sam Harris, 09:29)
• On the Decline of Institutional Integrity:
  • “This is the greatest act of vandalism in our lifetime.” (Sam Harris, 13:10)
• On Journalism and War Crimes:
  • “I’ve known [Kristof] to be a useful idiot for decades... he gets all of this wrong all the time.” (Sam Harris, 16:40)
• On Comparative Morality in Conflict:
  • “Israel is a society that will prosecute its rapists and torturers and et cetera, at a rate analogous to America or any other Western society. It's not to say there's no corruption... But there's a difference between us and our enemies, and the difference is the most important difference morally to keep in view in our lifetime.” (Sam Harris, 21:20)

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Important Timestamps

• Tour Reflections and Community Update: 00:25–03:58
• Iran Conflict Analysis – American Weakness & Incompetence: 04:04–11:45
• Trump/IRS Lawsuit & Kleptocracy: 12:24–15:37
• Nicholas Kristof, Gaza Prisoner Allegations, Media Critique: 15:52–21:35

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Tone & Language

• Sam Harris’s tone is sober, analytic, and sometimes acerbic—particularly in his assessments of the Trump administration’s competence and the failings of mainstream journalism on complex geopolitical issues. His language is precise, sometimes caustic, but always direct; he balances critiques with reasoned nuance, especially when discussing the limits of moral certainty and the perils of information warfare.

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For the full conversation and deeper context, subscribe to Making Sense at samharris.org

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to Making Sense with Sam Harris. This is the free version of the podcast, so you'll only hear the first part of today's conversation. If you want the full episode and every episode, you can [e-mail] There are no ads on this show. It runs entirely on subscriber support. If you enjoy what we're doing here and find it valuable, please consider subscribing today.

[B]

Welcome back to another episode of More from Sam. Once again, we are taping this live in front of subscribers. We've taken questions in advance and have invited everyone in the live recording to submit follow ups in real time. Hopefully you guys are ready to be doing that today. Before we get on to our first topic, you finished up some tour dates in Toronto, D.C. new York, Dallas, and Austin this past week and we're done now. Or are we?

[C]

Yeah, I think we are. I mean, I, I'll know we recorded two days. We recorded New York and Austin and yeah, it'll just, you know, we'll see what that recording looks like and see what we intend to do with it. But yeah, it feels like we're done with this talk.

[B]

We're done with this talk. But I don't know about touring in general. I feel like you had more fun than you.

[C]

I mean, for life. No, I don't think I'm done for life. But touring this talk, I mean, this talk, I've. We've been touring for. Was it 10 months? 11. 11 months, something like that?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's evolved month by month and then maybe by, you know, 10% or so. And yeah, I think I'm, I'm done repeating myself on this particular set of topics.

[B]

But the good news is we might do something else in the future and we'll let everybody know when. Yeah, we have that figured out.

[C]

We won't be shy about that.

[B]

Yeah, no need to list all the celebrities and public figures that came out to see you. But I did think it was adorable watching you fangirl over one in particular. The comic Jordan Jensen.

[C]

Yeah. Oh my gosh, that was great. Yeah, that was hilarious. Yeah, well, she's. If you haven't discovered her, Jordan Jensen is just a. A massive talent and she has a Netflix special. But the thing that really got me into her was just seeing her crowd work clips on YouTube. I mean, she's just so good in that zone. So, yeah, she came out to the Beacon in New York and yeah, I mean, I was, you know, I don't tend to get starstruck, but you know, I fangirled on her to a degree that just, I think probably astonished her. Her mom was there too, so it was kind of adorable.

[B]

It was great. I'll add that Neil Brennan came out to the show as well because I think everyone should listen to his. The podcast episode he did with you.

[C]

Yeah, he's a very funny man too. You should see his specials on Netflix.

[B]

Yeah, he just seemed to turn the right dials and get great stuff out of you in ways that others haven't, including me. So I, you know, if anyone wants to really hear more from you, that's a great episode to do it. And just a reminder, the community, our new community, your new community, has been private. It's been in private beta for a couple weeks now. We've gradually been inviting members in every day and it's been a place with lots of engagement, including plenty of disagreement with others and you. But it's been very respectful and enjoyable. We even have a few trumpers in there now and everyone's been cordial for the most part. We've only had to toss a couple people thus far, but it's been very clear that many in the community have also been wanting something like this to exist for quite some time. And I just want to add a little that little housekeeping on this that anyone who subscribed to the podcast before June 1st, we'll have free access to Community for as long as they maintain an active subscription. After June 1st or thereabouts, you will need a separate subscription to join Community. So if you want to check it out and engage with some fellow bright, mindful people, you can [e-mail] and get access to Community for free.

[C]

Now, I think we should also add that we. That this is totally web based now, but there's an app coming. I don't know when that's coming, next month or. But yeah, so soon. I think. I think people are frustrated that it's not app based, but that's. That will be remedied.

[B]

I've actually seen some people say the opposite, say that they kind of like having to sit down and get their thoughts together so that they're not just on the fly ripping comments without.

[C]

It actually might be. Yeah. It might degrade the quality of the conversation. Once we get an app.

[B]

We'll see, but we'll see anyway. How are you feeling about Iran? Are we going to get a good deal over there or what?

[C]

Uh, well, we're having this conversation on Memorial Day. You know, we should always stipulate that we have no idea what's going to happen 15 minutes from now because we're being ruled by maniacs. It certainly seems at this point that we almost have the worst of all worlds. I guess the worst possible scenario is that we, we hurl all of our military resources into this world war and still fail. Right? So like a boots on the ground quagmire, I guess that's the worst case scenario. So that doesn't appear to be in the cards. But we seem to have found the second worst scenario, which is Trump and his incompetent friends, Pete Hegseth in particular, have bragged and boasted and bluffed and then blinked and then blinked and then blinked again. All her bluffs were called. They've showcased American weakness and incompetence to a degree that I think no one could have rationally feared. I mean, even to the point where I'd be like. The last bit of optimism I think anyone had here was that the military itself is still the sort of military that befits a superpower. But in the clear light of day, even that seems not to be true. Maybe we're not a paper tiger, but we're. Or something close. We just don't have the right. We've almost run out of armaments. Apparently we're not very good at minesweeping or defending drones or like, we're not. We don't appear to be cutting edge in the ways that we needed to be for this. And we just seem to have blown through our stockpiles of armaments. Right. So we're rationing arms in addition to everything else we're doing. So it's a, it's terrible. It's a terrible outcome because Iran seemed for what all that we've done to degrade their capacity and their regime, and we've killed a lot of people. Apparently they're more powerful than they were at the beginning of this war. We've taught them and taught the world that they can hold 20% of the energy economy globally hostage and we can't do anything about it. I mean, Trump is just, you know, he's a corrupt weakling and he's made our country look like that. I mean, that's really the net result so far. Now, again, 15 minutes from now, we could start bombing everything and the regime could collapse and we could see democracy emerge in the streets. I mean, I guess that's not a. Outside the realm of possibility, is probably below a 1% possibility at this point, or even a 1/10 of 1% possibility. But I mean, I've always held out hope that despite our incompetence and despite Trump and Hegseth's insane bellicosity and stupidity and having made every effort to alienate all of our allies, et cetera, that we might still produce something that was better than the status quo here. But that doesn't seem to have happened.

[B]

Are you saying that boots on the ground now is your worst case scenario? Because I think in the past you had said that allowing them to a

[C]

failed attempt in that if we had put more resources in and still failed, that would be the worst case scenario. To lose the war with boots on the ground would be worse than the war we seem to be in the process of losing. And I mean, it's interesting to consider what it actually means to lose or win a war of this sort. You know, obviously we haven't had many Americans die, although I think the destruction and, you know, of our bases and planes and all that has been somewhat concealed from us. I mean, I think the Iranians did more damage to us and our allies than. Than has been made clear. There's been a lot of lying, I think, as you might expect from the Trump administration. But, you know, we haven't. It's weird to think of this as a defeat, you know, if you're just looking at numbers of dead and the material destruction. But the optics here really matter and we have revealed to all of our enemies that there's. We're only willing to sacrifice, you know, the stock market ticker for a few short minutes before we're going to get very nervous and pivot. And again, Trump is. His messaging about this has been the worst case scenario because it's been pure bluster and bluff and all of our bluffs got called. It is just the weakest possible presentation of our role in the world.

[B]

So ending the war at the time of our choosing and the way we would do it, whatever Hegseth said, that does not seem to be the case.

[C]

Yeah, and complete surrender, unconditional surrender was the standard initially. And I mean, if anyone has surrendered, we have surrendered. And so just think of the conversation I had with Ben Shapiro a few weeks ago or whatever that was a month ago or so. He was quite confident even then that Trump was never going to settle for an outcome that would be worse than the JCPOA deal that he's endlessly derided. Never step away from Israel's, our joint interests with Israel. He's just this staunch defender of Western civilization and basic sanity in the Middle East. And I've always, again, I have been very hawkish on jihadism in general and the jihadist regime in, in Iran in particular in recent months. But I've always said that this war could well be a disaster given kind of the unprincipled nature and the just obvious incompetence of our administration. Again, I'll just remind people, we put a game show host in charge of the world's only superpower. We put a Fox and Friends host in charge of our military. What did we expect was going to happen? Right. So that has always been the fear, again, given the fact that the Iranian people seem poised to revolt and take some considerable risk. Though we came quite late to their defense after some tens of thousands were killed by the regime. I mean, there was always this hope that we were going to kind of uncork a new world in Iran, given that the population is so tired of theocracy. But that certainly doesn't seem to be happening. I mean, it might happen six months from now after we leave the place. I mean, that's totally possible, but again, it looks bad.

[B]

So this, this is coming in from one of the, one of the subscribers. What would you consider to be a

[C]

victory now, regime change? Well, I mean, there's no, this is what I've, I think I've been very clear about from the beginning. There's no end to this short of regime change that we could consider a victory. Of course we're going to lie about considering even this humiliating outcome of victory. But no, I mean, regime change was the only thing to hope for and it had to have been the real purpose of this whole exercise. Whatever we are, we're going to say about it now, Regime change is the only thing that guarantees that Iran could not be a nuclear armed enemy in the future. I mean, that's just not, they're going to, whatever they say, they're going to sprint toward a bomb. I mean, there's going to be no enforcement of anything. We have less power than we had in the beginning. I mean, it's, again, it's somewhat paradoxical that we got here this way because we somehow got less power by creating a lot of, you know, harm to our enemy in this case. But our enemy is, is stronger in some very specific ways and we are weaker in some very specific ways. And, and crucially, all of this has been advertised to everyone. Right. So, I mean, no one thinks we would defend Taiwan now. I mean that you couldn't possibly think that.

[B]

So did you see where Robert Kagan said that giving Iran control of the Strait is more power than they would have had they been able to build a nuclear weapon. You saw that clip.

[C]

No, I didn't see that, but I read his piece in the Atlantic, and McKagan is somewhat, obviously, he's extremely well informed. He has taken the darkest view of not just this misadventure, but really just the erosion of American power under Trump that I'm aware of. I mean, he's really been a Cassandra here, and that doesn't mean he's wrong. I think he's. You could discount what he says by 50% and still be very depressed at where we are in the world.

[B]

I want to move on to. For those who haven't been following this next story, the. The Trumps sued the irs, and. And the judge said something to the effect of, hey, wait a minute, don't you oversee the irs? Which, of course makes the case not adversarial. So the Trumps dropped their lawsuit and settled out of court. A deal that includes.

[C]

Settled with themselves. Yeah, correct.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. A deal that includes barring the IRS from ever going after the Trumps for anything that they may have done in the past forever.

[C]

In all caps. Yeah. Just as a clue to who wrote the actual judgment. Right. I mean, it's just the fact that it's written like one of his truth social posts is just, again, all of this is mortifying to us as a country. It's like just half of America doesn't appear to care about how the rest of the world views us. But, I mean, beyond our military power, which again now is in question in a way that should astonish everyone, our soft power is the thing that Trump has just set on fire. We just are not in a role of anything like leadership now because we stand for nothing. I mean, we have the most corrupt administration anyone has ever seen. It's a kleptocracy. And he has just been trading away our policies and institutional power and reputation abroad as though it was his personal property just to exact tribute from whatever former friends or foes can be forced to pay that tribute. And it's. I don't even have a theory of mind about a fellow American who understands what's happened here and doesn't care about it. I mean, it's just, this is the greatest act of vandalism in our lifetime.

[B]

I think you've said that a hundred times on this podcast now, and you got to keep saying it again and again.

[C]

I just can't understand how people don't see what's at stake here or seeing it don't care about it. It's just like, where does this. I mean, maybe on some level, this is kind of like the fall of empire, right? But this is the intentional, you know, self defenestration of the world's only superpower. And it is just bizarre that we can't even keep the details in view because there are so many of them. Right? I mean, it's just. I mean, just this deal alone, this slush fund that he's stolen from, it's. Our tax dollars, or nearly $2 billion with all that we can't pay for, are going to go to a slush fund which at his discretion, he can appoint all the people overseeing this fund will pay his loyalist goons from January 6th riders onward. I mean, we're a banana republic. This is so far from normal. And if this were the one thing he did. Again, this is just. There are only so many moves you can make here. So to try to illuminate the grotesque novelty of all of this, but just imagine Obama or any other normal president doing any one of these things and it's unthinkable. And the reaction from the other side would have been. It just would have been a tsunami of resistance. And yet we're just. We seem incapable of marshaling the appropriate response because on some level, there's just so much to respond to.

[B]

Well, making that deal with oneself really is tennis without the net. So that's very hard for anyone to miss there. I know this is a couple weeks old now or 10 days or whatever it was, but many people would like to get your reaction on the Nicholas Kristoff piece in the New York Times.

[C]

Oh, that's a very complicated reaction. You know who did this at length? Who? I think I basically agree with everything he said, and maybe he might have said more in the meantime, but Noam Dwarman over on his podcast, I love that guy. I mean, Noam is just very, very smart and he spent a lot of time on this and I think he has my proxy on all of it. I'll briefly summarize what he said, but just a few points to keep in mind. One is we should expect the mistreatment of prisoners at some level in every prison system. We should really expect it in a time of war. We should really expect it when the prisoners are stand a chance of being innocent people whose rights everyone should really worry about. But they're committed terrorists who are eager to die for their cause. Right? I mean, just imagine what it's like to be incarcerating these people and imagine what it's like to be a prison guard in the presence of these people who you. I mean, there's, again, there's no pretense of innocence here, right? These are committed jihadists who, who raped and murdered and, you know, burned families alive on October 7th. And now it's your job to keep them from, you know, biting you or throwing their shit at you or. I mean, just think of the most awful job in the world, and this is probably it. And also the most morally taxing one, right? So the idea that there's going to be some level of abuse in a circumstance like this, I mean, that just that is guaranteed. We'd have. It would be a miracle if it didn't happen. So we should, of course, assume that reports of it happening are plausible, right? So when I hear reports of this awful stuff happening that shouldn't happen, my default setting is, oh, yeah, it probably happened. Right. And I add to that the humiliation associated with some of these acts, right. You know, sexual abuse and, you know, raped by dogs being the most extreme allegation. Right? So what. What would it take for a Muslim man to allege that that had been done to him? Right. You know, the incentives are, are not in the direction of lying. You know, so again, it all seems on his face plausible to me. That said, Nicholas Kristoff is obviously a useful idiot, right, who did not do the work of a proper journalist to, in reporting the story. And many people have gone kind of deep on that and, and analyzed it and, you know, shown the distance between what he did and what a properly reported story on this front would look like. So I'm not going to connect all those dots here, but he's just. I've known him to be a useful idiot for decades, right? He's on this specific topic, just how to fight the war on terror. What is jihadism? Whether Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a feminist icon or an Islamophobe, he gets all of this wrong all the time, right? He's just somebody who's easily manipulated by Islamists and their apologists. And part of my people remember my collision with Ben Affleck on Real Time. Well, what you couldn't see out of frame is that basically I was focusing much of my attention on Nicholas Kristof because he was the one on that panel who really should have known which end was up, and he doesn't. And it's quite shameful, really, given that he purports to be so focused on the rights of women throughout the developing world. There's no more egregious violator of the rights of women throughout the developing world than Islam and its extremities. So the first line of defense that many people took here, I think even Haviv Rettegour took this line, which I don't happen to agree with. And this is a point that Noam also made on his podcast, which is these charges are absurd on their face because obviously you couldn't train a dog to rape a person. I just. That does not ring true to me. I think you can train a dog to play the piano and do much else that is complicated. So, I mean, the idea. I mean, there have been reports of dog rape from other regimes like Egypt and others for many, many years. So who knows what actually happened here. Again, so I'm not dismissing even the worst allegations here as being obviously untrue. And Nicholas Kristof was totally irresponsible and produced a. Willingly produced a blood libel here. Right? So I think you need to be able to hold those two things in your head. And again, as many people pointed out, this was released on a day where this very, very searching report on Hamas's crimes on October 7th came out. 300 pages of detail there, and the detail is as awful as you could fear. And that seemed. I think the New York Times has said that that's just an accident. I don't think anyone should believe them at this point. The paper has shown itself to be ideologically bamboozled on this front. So just ending this, I don't know what's true in Christoph's allegations. All of that if true, all of it should be prosecuted. It's all awful, it's all illegal. It's also understandable that it would happen at some rate, given the nature of the situation, and it'd be a miracle if nothing like that ever happened in analogous situations. So, yeah, it's all a mess. And yet we have to keep our eye on the real issue, which is Hamas would do this again and again and again until the end of the world. Israel is a society that will prosecute its rapists and torturers and et cetera, at a rate analogous to America or any other Western society. It's not to say there's no corruption, it's not to say there are no evil people. It's not to say that someone's not going to try to hide facts until they can no longer be hidden. That's all true. But there's a difference between us and our enemies, and the difference is the most important difference morally to keep in view in our lifetime.

[B]

Why do you think people like Nicholas Kristof continue to get it wrong with regard to women's rights when it comes to Islam? What would he say to them?

[A]

Members can hear the full conversation by [e-mail] subscribers. Get a private RSS feed you can use with your favorite podcast player.