The Crisis of Truth in American Politics — with Sam Harris

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Episode: The Crisis of Truth in American Politics — with Sam Harris
Date: January 15, 2026
Host: Scott Galloway (“Prof G”)
Guest: Sam Harris, neuroscientist, philosopher, author, host of the Making Sense podcast

---

Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between Scott Galloway and Sam Harris about the state of truth—and its crisis—in contemporary American politics. The discussion weaves through police and government accountability, the explosion of conspiracy thinking, partisanship in media, culture wars, identity politics, and the challenges facing pluralistic societies. Harris and Galloway also explore issues of masculinity, parenting teenagers, and the complex cultural conflicts surrounding Islamism and foreign policy. The tone is candid, nuanced, and at times darkly humorous.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Updates and Tone Setting

• Prof G opens with humorous and self-deprecating anecdotes about his travels and recent cosmetic surgery, setting a familiar, unfiltered tone for the conversation.
• Quote: “I am about two years into a midlife crisis that I think is... gonna end in about 40 years.” (04:46, Prof G)

---

2. Police Violence, ICE, and Government Dishonesty

[06:24–15:19]

• Sam Harris’s Perspective:
  • Harris begins by acknowledging his usual bias toward law enforcement, drawing from personal training and a general inclination to give police the benefit of the doubt.
  • The recent killing of Renee Goode in Minneapolis is, however, described as “just a crystal clear instance of a terrible cop, terribly trained, doing something quite unjustifiable” (07:54, Sam Harris).
  • Harris is deeply disturbed by both the lack of credible justification for the shooting and, more so, by the administration’s unapologetically dishonest response:

    “It’s a type of lying that makes no pretense of being believable... They can bludgeon us with lies. And that's what's happening.” (08:52, Sam Harris)

• Media Partisanship:
  • Galloway and Harris criticize the hyper-partisan and identity-laden media response, especially Fox News using descriptors like “lesbian activist” to further polarize audiences (09:52, Prof G).
• The duo highlights how ideological tribalism now trumps honest engagement with evidence—among both political leaders and the broader public.
  • “We're just now in the presence of non-adults... where you just start demonizing your critics and making no contact with facts and then wait for the news cycle to move on to the next outrage.” (13:37, Sam Harris)

---

3. Masculine Identity, Recruitment, and Partisan Echo Chambers

[15:19–18:06]

• Galloway notes the openly militaristic, primal tenor of ICE recruitment (“There is an invasion. We’re in a war, and we need you to fight.”) and how this stirs “emotionally powerful” but ultimately divisive sentiments.
• Harris worries about the dissolution of any cultural “mainstream,” noting America’s total fragmentation of information:

  “This is really not the blue dress, yellow dress moment where you can understand how people are seeing it so differently. I honestly can't understand how anyone can honestly believe the descriptions that have come from the government.” (16:53, Sam Harris)

• The lack of shared reality is, for Harris, “an unusually extreme version of the shattering of our culture.”

---

4. The Surge of Conspiracy Thinking

[18:06–23:33]

• Why Conspiracy Theories Flourish:
  • Harris says, “There's more of it on the right. It is everywhere. This is a kind of generic software flaw we appear to be suffering, but right of center, the appetite for conspiracy thinking has just grown like a cancer.” (18:17, Sam Harris)
  • He points to the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens’ outlandish assassination claims—a symptom of an epistemic collapse on the right, abetted by even prominent media figures (Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly) who hesitate to condemn such content.
• Cultural Vulnerability:
  • Harris describes this as a “species of brain damage that something like a half, a third to a half of our society seems to be suffering.” (22:52, Sam Harris)
  • He details the psychological impossibility of sustaining large conspiracies—yet, he laments, unfalsifiable thinking is winning out.

---

5. Media and Western Response to Iran and Islamic Theocracy

[27:15–37:38]

• Undercoverage of Iran:
  • Harris finds the silence about events in Iran telling, attributing it to a mixture of partisan inconvenience and leftist “moral confusion” about Islamism and theocracy.
  • “Islamic theocracy is a deal breaker for the west and for open societies. This is crystal clear.” (29:01, Sam Harris)
  • He credits Trump (despite his other failings) with a more rationally uncompromising stance—something he argues Democrats (Obama, Biden, Harris) have lacked.
• The “Moral Color Code”:
  • Galloway introduces Elica Laban’s idea that Western progressive outrage is calibrated less by the scale of violence/oppression, and more by the identities of those involved. Harris agrees, arguing the world only cares “when Jews do it” and unfairly singles out Israel.
  • “The only interpretation that makes sense of it is antisemitism in some form based on some rationale that goes unexpressed.” (35:09, Sam Harris)
• Identity Politics:
  • Harris warns that obsession with identity clouds moral clarity: “Something like half of our society won't know quite how they feel about what you've just described until you tell them the skin colors of the people involved. Was the attacker white or black? Was the victim white or black? That's just obscene.” (36:27, Sam Harris)
  • Predicts Democratic Party’s fate in 2028 hinges on these unresolved cultural divisions.

---

6. Masculinity, Messaging, and Left-Right Political Failures

[37:38–40:10]

• Galloway observes backlash he receives as a white male discussing men’s issues: “I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just maybe the wrong messenger.” (38:29, Prof G)
• Harris concurs, stating that his own identity “certainly does” get in the way of people hearing him and places blame equally on the left and right for the rise of Trump:
  • “The Democratic Party has been so captured by its activists, which is probably 8% of Democrats at best. The pandering to the loudest and most hysterical of the far left has to stop.” (39:50, Sam Harris)

---

7. Combatting Jihadism and Immigration Policy

[40:10–50:25]

• Harris is explicit that the broader challenge from jihadist ideology is cultural, not just a matter of radicalized terrorists. He calls for honest intra-Muslim debate, a “renaissance, reformation, [or even] civil war” within the Muslim world to root out supremacist ideology.
  • “If liberals won't enforce borders, fascists will.” (42:12, Sam Harris, quoting David Frum)
  • Stresses that “Criticizing Islam as a system of ideas is no more a form of bigotry than criticizing communism…” (43:33, Sam Harris)
• On immigration and Western responses:
  • Advocates for amplifying ex-Muslim and secular voices, and “provok[ing]...a kind of renaissance and reformation” (44:59, Sam Harris).
  • He acknowledges the discomfort of agreeing, in part, with figures like Stephen Miller but insists: “You have to cut through the bigotry and moral insanity... But there is a kernel of truth. We don’t want any more true believers who have no intention of assimilating in the west.” (47:14, Sam Harris)
• Warns of the real influence (e.g., Qatari funding of US universities, stealth Islamist organizations in America) and Western left’s confusion on how to respond.

---

8. Parenting and Personal Life

[53:33–58:05]

• Prof G pivots to family and parenting, asking Harris about raising teenagers.
• On parenting control:
  • “I’m humbled by how much control we don’t have. The research seems to suggest that any pretension that you are going to really impart your view of the world and your interests to your kids... is fairly forlorn.” (53:59, Sam Harris)
• On Home Life:
  • Harris shows a softer, more humorous side:

    “I can be the silly dad in a way that would be unrecognizable to my audience... The home videos of me with the cats or with my daughters I think would show a face of me that would fairly astonish my audience.” (56:36, Sam Harris)

  • He recalls audience surprise when he laughed with his wife on the podcast: “It was like some kind of religious revelation... the response to it was just insane.” (57:16, Sam Harris)

---

Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On government lying:

  “It’s a type of lying that makes no pretense of being believable... They can bludgeon us with lies.” (08:52, Sam Harris)

• On cultural fragmentation:

  “We have just fragmented so totally with respect to how we consume information... This is not even a situation where we're so within our echo chambers that we're not making contact with the same data.” (15:51, Sam Harris)

• On conspiratorial thinking:

  “The appetite for conspiracy thinking has just grown like a cancer...” (18:17, Sam Harris)
  “You can tell members of Turning Point that they have had a hand in murdering their founder. And half of them want to hear more about that. That’s how masochistic and insane this style of thinking is.” (21:38, Sam Harris)

• On antisemitism and moral confusion:

  “The only interpretation that makes sense of it is antisemitism in some form based on some rationale that goes unexpressed.” (35:09, Sam Harris)

• On identity and communication:

  “It certainly does [get in the way]. Doesn’t get in the way of my stating it, but it gets in the way of the audience hearing it.” (38:39, Sam Harris)

• On political danger:

  “If liberals won’t enforce borders, fascists will.” (42:12, Sam Harris, quoting David Frum)

• On parenting:

  “I’m humbled by how much control we don’t have... the environment is not your parenting, right? So it matters who their friends are, it matters what school they go to... But we have very little control over that.” (53:59, Sam Harris)

• On private vs. public persona:

  “I can be the silly dad in a way that would be unrecognizable to my audience...” (56:36, Sam Harris)

---

Memorable Moments

• Harris’s candor about the crisis of truth and his willingness to admit ideological consistency sometimes means agreeing in part with political figures he otherwise abhors.
• Galloway’s jokes about his own midlife crisis, cosmetic surgery, and rich anecdotes keep the discussion human, while his acknowledgment of his own privilege and “messenger problem” adds depth.
• The exchange about raising teenagers and Harris’s dual role as public intellectual and “silly dad” provides a touching contrast to the episode’s heavier themes.

---

Noteworthy Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------|------------| | Prof G's humorous monologue, setting tone | 02:10–06:24| | Police, ICE, and media/administration response | 06:24–15:19| | Masculinity, militarism, and partisanship | 15:19–18:06| | The cancer of conspiracy thinking | 18:06–23:33| | US/Iran, Islamism, Western moral confusion | 27:15–37:38| | Masculinity and public messaging | 37:38–40:10| | Islam, immigration, Western security | 40:10–50:25| | Parenting teenagers and personal life | 53:33–58:05|

---

Summary

Scott Galloway and Sam Harris deliver a bracing critique of America’s epistemic and political dysfunction—corrosive partisanship, the rise of unfalsifiable conspiracy theories, and self-defeating identity politics. Harris laments the collapse of truth in public institutions and media, underscores the dangers of moral confusion on the left (especially regarding Israel and Islamism), and calls for cultural renewal both at home and in the Muslim world. Both men reflect (half-wistfully, half-wearily) on the challenge of communicating across hostile tribal lines and the need for honesty, reform, and a bit of personal humility.

---

For listeners seeking a thorough, centrist, and occasionally provocative diagnosis of America’s truth crisis—and how the “software flaws” in our brains, politics, and media make it worse—this episode of the Prof G Pod with Sam Harris is essential.

Transcript

[Jerry Lee]

Everyone's heard of a midlife crisis, but what about a mid career crisis? Turns out countless people are going through one right now. For some, they're starting to feel they've hit a wall, that there's no room for growth, no new opportunities. Promotions pass them by. Raises are few and far between. Others worry they're becoming replaceable, either by younger talent or by technology. And still others find themselves asking over and over, is this all there is? If any of this feels familiar, it's time to visit Strawberry Me, where a certified career coach will work with you to get you out of your rut and help you move forward, either at your current job or by helping you land a new, more rewarding one. Your Strawberry coach will help you turn a mid career crisis into a mid career revival. Go to Strawberry Me unstuck and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's Strawberry Me Unstuck. Now is the most affordable time ever to find out if career coaching right for you.

[Nilay Patel]

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world flock to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics show, and they spend a week trying to sell each other on the weirdest gadgets you've ever seen in your entire life. This week on the Vergecast, we're talking all about everything happening at CES, from the TVs to the AI gadgets to the humanoid robots that everybody is hoping might someday do your laundry and wash your dishes. All that and much more on the Vergecast. Wherever you get podcasts.

[Sam Harris]

This winter, the cold and flu have been especially bad. And the culprits, well, they're everywhere.

[Jerry Lee]

Literally the entire planet is just packed with viruses that are infecting everything.

[Sam Harris]

And I mean literally everything. Even other viruses. This week unexplain it to me from vox. Those pesky microbes getting us sick and how they might also be helping us stay well.

[Explainer Host]

New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Prof G]

Episode 379. 379 is the country code for Vatican City. In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal.

[Sam Harris]

True story.

[Prof G]

The Exorcist is actually having a sequel. Instead of a priest trying to get the devil out of a little girl, it's about trying to get a priest.

[Sam Harris]

Out of a little boy.

[Prof G]

Okay, that's not that good. I've used that one before. Asking churchgoers for money is like Epstein asking for bail money. Is that better? Actually, none of this is true. The Catholic Church just announced a new position on homosexuality. What is that new position? Only if it's under 12. Go go.

[Sam Harris]

Go.

[Prof G]

Welcome to the 379th episode of the Prop G Pod. What's happening? I'm back in action. It's a busy first week traveling from New York to Miami, then back to let's Talk about me. Let's Talk about Me. I was in Australia. I did that bridge climb thing. Had dinner at the Sydney Opera House. Very cheesy, very touristy, and I absolutely loved it. I've turned into that tourist where I'm now climbing bridges and going to have dinner in the Opera House. By the way, Opera House. Initially commissioned in 1959, it took 13 years. It was supposed to cost 7 million. It ended up costing 110 million. And in order to pay for it, they introduced the Australian Lottery. Who would have thought it? I think we'd all live in Australia if it wasn't so goddamn far. Oh, my gosh. Great people, great food. I went to Lizard island, which just reminded me a lot of the Bahamas. Very nice. But in my opinion, a brand that's a bit overrated. But what an incredible people country. I just had such a wonderful time. My boys got this great picture of my boys on the bridge and, oh, I just had such a nice time. Stop by Singapore if you haven't been there. Just imagine if Nordstrom's was a city. But the good Nordstrom's back in the, like 80s and 90s Nordstrom's. Imagine it was a city that's Singapore. Had just an incredible time, then went back to LA and worked on Netflix, which is Latin for had plastic surgery. As is the reason my camera is over. I asked my surgeon that I just wanted to look natural, but unfortunately, I look naturally surprised all of the fucking time right now. And I wanted to look like, I don't know, a better version or a refreshed version of myself. Instead, I look like a distant cousin that just looks kind of scared all the time. That's why my camera's off. My nose looks like a Minivan from the 80s. I'm pretty sure if I fell asleep, there'd be squatters in there by the time I woke up. Anyways, I'll do a reveal sometime next week, but I thought it was going to be really minor elective surgery. And I have been on opiates. Is this the opiate speaking? Is this the opiate speaking? Also, folks, what hole am I trying to fill here? I have people who love me unconditionally. I'm economically secure. I actually feel pretty attractive. I have got a lot of confidence for my looks. I am. I'm Rich. So I assume people think I'm good looking. So what the fuck is going on here? And I need an intervention. You know what I was doing last night? I was looking at Ferraris online. Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? I am about two years into a midlife crisis that I think is. Is gonna end in about 40 years. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. Anyways, longer conversation. But in today's episode, we have just the right person to talk to about it. A guy who's become a friend is no joke, a role model of mine. Cause he's courageous, unfiltered, and also just wicked smart. Wicked smart. Of course. I'm talking about the inimitable Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, philosopher, bestselling author and host of the Making Sense podcast. We discussed with Sam masculinity in the Democratic Party, the rise of conspiracy and trolling. Oh my God, I'm just such an enormous fan of Sam. I think he is so good. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with Sam Harris. Sam, where does this podcast find you?

[Sam Harris]

Los Angeles.

[Prof G]

There you go with that. Let's segue to ice. What's your reaction to what's happening around ice, specifically with the shooting and what kind of damage? Or do you think it's doing damage? Or maybe if it's helping Trump and MAGA as a whole.

[Sam Harris]

A little backstory here. I've spent a lot of time focusing on the public misperception of police violence. People just, in my experience, know how to watch these videos. And the stuff that they often think is outrageous really isn't. So when you think of the cop's eye view of the world. So my bias here, if anything, is to be very charitable to law enforcement because I've trained a lot with firearms, I've trained a lot with. Been trained by law enforcement at various levels. And it's very natural for me to see their perspective on these kinds of encounters. The simple fact that when someone is being approached by a cop who may be intending to arrest them or not just approaching them, just approaching their car the moment their hands disappear. In a country like America, where there's 400 million guns, that becomes an evolving emergency. Your hands are everything. So people to have no sense of this, right? So they immediately duck down and reach for something and they don't realize they're putting themselves in danger. So that said, the video that we all saw of this encounter in Minneapolis and the subsequent killing of Renee Goode struck me as just a crystal clear instance of a terrible cop, terribly trained, doing something quite unjustifiable, leading to the death of an innocent civilian. I think any effort to defend it, I have not seen even a slightly credible one. Even if you were going to defend the first shot, the subsequent two are just clearly an attempt to ensure that she's dead after the cop is just objectively out of harm's way. I mean it's just not. But all of that's alarming and awful. But the worst part was the administration's response to it. Right out of the gate they started lying in the most. I mean it's not even. You can't even call it lying on some level because it's a type of lying that makes no pretense of being believable. If you were going to lie in a way that was meant to deceive, you'd make some contact with the evidence. But here they just seem to think that they can bludgeon us with lies. And that's what's happening. I mean just literally every word out of the mouth of the President, the Vice President, Kristi Noem. It's just all been to encourage a kind of mass hallucination. And the fact that so many people seem to willing to participate in that hallucination right of center is frankly fairly scary.

[Prof G]

What do you make of so what has struck me in addition to your what you highlighted the administration's response is how the media has responded. And I can almost tell you how the media responds based on the logo. It just seems like there's a total lack of all critical thinking. Specifically, I was especially triggered by Fox who led with lesbian activist. You know, as if to say our audience clearly would hold her more culpable if she we highlighted that she sleeps with someone of the same sex that somehow that might in some way justify or make her seem less or more deserving of this kind of treatment. Any thoughts on how the media has handled it and how people are absorbing it? I've seen a GoFundMe for the officer that includes large donations from fairly public figures.

[Sam Harris]

Yeah, well, I'm not even sure why that would be necessary at this point because it sounds like the administration has said nothing but exculpatory things about him. So I can't imagine any kind of prosecution is in the offing. I'm inclined to bend over backwards to be charitable to law enforcement in these situations. But from what we can tell about the vetting and frenzied recruitment of ice, it's just clearly, they're putting guns in the hands of people who are spectacularly unqualified to be wielding them. And they're putting them in situations with a philosophy of it's not even law enforcement, it's just some kind of public intimidation. Again, this is not a normal police work that we're seeing. And I think these kinds of errors be charitable with respect to the intentions of the cop in this case, but it's obviously an error to have shot this person and killed her. It's just not. And again, what isn't an error or what can't plausibly be thought to be an error is the ongoing response to this from the government and from highly partisan media to describe her behavior as clearly terroristic. I mean, she's a terrorist who was trying to mow down cops. I mean, not even just the one cop. It sounded like, to hear it described from on high, it was multiple cops. The cops were just trying to get their, their car out of the snow. And here came this maniac terrorist activist who was clearly weaponized by some enemy within. Right. There's some antifa cult that has funded all of this. Right. Probably George Soros is at the back of it and turned these drones loose on our innocent ICE officers. And she just tried to. This is one of the, the car attacks that we see from jihadists. Right? This is what you expect to see hearing it described. And then you turn on the video and one of these videos was shot by the officer himself. You might have asked why he was walking around her car, filming her with his own cell phone. I mean, that was bizarre behavior. And then Drew with his other hand and shot her through the windshield. Shot her twice more. Once she was clearly past him. But from all of that video, you see an apparently benign person who's, yes, doing something probably illegal, for which maybe she should have been arrested. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. She's blocking traffic. She doesn't have a right to do that with her car. But the way she handled her car and the contradictory demands she was getting from the ICE agents, there was just no sign of her trying to kill anyone with her car. And again, even if you were going to make the worst interpretation of her initial movements, where let's say she's trying to run over that ICE agent from two feet away, albeit slowly, his subsequent shots are unjustified. He shot her through the windshield of her car. He's to the side of her car, which is moving at two miles an hour. She's already been shot in the face and he shoots her twice more. That part is an execution. And how. We have a government now who will double and triple down on obvious lies. I mean, there's just no burden to correct the record. There's nothing. Careful. It's all partisan bile. And so everything is political. Right. We're just now in the presence of non adults where it's a Stephen Miller ish vibe that has spread everywhere, where you just start demonizing your critics and making no contact with facts and then wait for the news cycle to move on to the next outrage, which will predictably appear within 24 hours, given what's happening with this administration.

[Prof G]

Yeah, the recruitment strategy for these agents is telling. It feels as if it's very primal. This is an exact quote from the recruiting materials. There is an invasion. We're in a war, and we need you to fight. And then the language of protection, invasion and insurgency, it can feel masculine and therefore emotionally powerful. Any thoughts on this? Sort of. On this ideology and what it's doing to our society and if there is a mainstream politics anymore?

[Sam Harris]

Yeah, it's hard to know where the mainstream is. We have just fragmented so totally with respect to how we consume information. But what's so disconcerting about this current event is that the information is so clear and you can be reasonably sure that everyone has seen the same videos. Right. There was this initial moment where there was a video shot from another angle which seemed to make it a little less clear what was happening. But this is not even a situation where we're so within our echo chambers that we're not making contact with the same data. In this case, I think we clearly are. But the commentary on that data is so hyper partisan and then the echo chambers take over. I mean, I don't know. This is really not the blue dress, yellow dress moment where you can understand how people are seeing it so differently. I honestly can't understand how anyone can honestly believe the descriptions that have come from the government. So, I mean, this is a. An unusually extreme version of the shattering of our culture based on rival interpretations of facts. And that's what I think has caused people to kind of spin out so fully on it. Yeah, I'm worried. We have an administration who tends to frame everything in terms of there being an enemy within, that it's. It's only decent and sane to be kind of filled with hate and fear with respect to some significant subset of your own population. There's not even a pretense of appealing to all of America with any initiative. It's intrinsically divisive everything. It's just us against them, and them is half of America. And it's the institutions and it's the media. It's just, I mean, it's been going on, obviously since, for about a decade with Trump and Trumpism, but it's getting more and more excruciating to live with its consequences.

[Prof G]

What do you make of the spread of all the kind of conspiracy thinking both on the left and the right? What need do you think it's fulfilling?

[Sam Harris]

Well, I think there's more of it on the right. It is everywhere. This is a kind of generic software flaw. We appear to be suffering, but right of center, the appetite for conspiracy thinking has just grown like a cancer. And the strangest case of it, which was. Which was, I think, impossible to anticipate, it was so extreme, was in the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, you had Candace Owens, who's become this sort of kind of supernatural grifting force, alleged that he had been assassinated by some combination of the French Foreign Legion and the Mossad. And Turning Point itself, Turning Point she was culpable for, if not initiating the assassination. They were busy covering it up for some. I don't think I've heard how they're incentivized to do this, but on her account, they're covering up the murder, so they have a hand in it. And so she's been saying these things to great effect on the right to millions and millions of people. She has a huge fan base, apparently, on the right. Some of the other leading lights of independent media, right of center, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly especially, have not wanted to condemn this lunacy. Right. They want to preserve the space for her to say that, of course, to well within her free speech rights to make these allegations. But the amazing thing is that when Tucker and Candace showed up at the Turning Point America Fest conference, where the 30,000 true believers are going to show up in person, but to buy a ticket for the privilege of being in the room where history is made again in the aftermath of the murder of their founder and now, you know, patron saint, it turned out that when some people on the stage, like Ben Shapiro, condemned Candace and her enablers as being more or less the death knell of the Republican Party and conservatism in America, half the audience, it seemed, really wanted to hear more about the conspiracy. Right. So you can tell members of Turning Point that they have had a hand in murdering their founder. And half of them want to hear more about that. That's how masochistic and insane this style of thinking is. And yeah, it's just. I mean, it's a deeply unprincipled way of trying to make sense of anomalies in the world. Any situation you can point to admits of highly unparsimonious, reckless, cognitively bizarre interpretations. You can just look for anomalies. You can ask the question, well, why was it? I think, as Candace does, I mean, she asks questions like, well, why did the Egyptian Air Force have a plane in this city on this day? Just look for something weird and then begin to pull on that thread. It doesn't matter that it makes no connection to all the other threads you're pulling on. This is just some bright, shiny object that you can spin up into some weird implication. It's a character trait that certain people have. I mean, I am fairly allergic to it. But it's not to say that no one ever conspires or that no conspiracy theories ever turn out to be true, but so often it's so obviously unlikely because the incentives aren't aligned. You can't get hundreds, much less thousands of people to be equivalently incentivized to act like psychopaths and conceal the evidence of everyone else's wrongdoing until the end of time because the incentives are just not aligned that way. And people have guilty consciences and people get at cross purposes with their previous collaborators and people want to be famous or they have a change of heart and someone winds up on 60 Minutes spilling the beans about the thing that they conspired to do. But no, with so many of these conspiracies, what people imagine is just utter competence. Just perfect psychopathy married to perfect competence and information concealment and the perfect alignment of incentives and a perfect ability to fake a far more plausible stream of evidence that people get in hand. Right, so it doesn't matter that we've arrested the guy who quite obviously killed Kirk and that he had the relevant communications about that on his phone, and that his family turned him in, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know. It's a species of brain damage that something like a half, a third to a half of our society seems to be suffering. And. And it's a cultural problem at bottom, I'm sure, but we have to get over it.

[Prof G]

We'll be right back after a quick break.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Support for today's show comes from Northwest Registered Agent. Your business identity is everything from what customers see to what they don't see, like legal paperwork, website security, and state licenses. So it's time to get more for your business. More privacy, more tools, more guidance. With Northwest Registered Agent you can build your business identity Fast for just $39 plus state fees. Get an LLC, domain name, business email, local phone number, business address, registered agent and compliance in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Northwest is your one stop business solution. That means you can get everything from business formation paperwork to custom domains, websites and trademark registration all in one, easy to use, accessible from anywhere online account. Plus Northwest's mail forwarding is available in 20 states and growing which can give you a physical business address separate from your private information. Don't wait, protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business Identity in just 10 clicks in 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com paidprof g and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered [e-mail]/paid Prop.

[Prof G]

G.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

Support for the show comes from iM8 if you're looking for a daily all in one wellness drink that gives your body the support it needs, you might want to try im8. It was co founded by David Beckham and crafted with insight from experts at Mayo Clinic, Cedar Sinai and a former NASA Channel Chief scientist. I have tried im8. I've been taking it every day. It makes me feel good, it makes me feel fresh, I feel hydrated, I feel good to go for the day. So I am loving my experience so far. You can feel your best self every day with im8. You can go to im8health.com profg and use code profg for a free welcome kit five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That is I am number 8H E-A L T H.com Prof. G code Prof. G for a free welcome kit 5 free travel sachets plus 10% off your order im8health.com Prof. G Code Prof. G these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you've ever hired for your small business, you know how important it is to find the right person. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant so you can feel confident you're finding top talent that you can't find anywhere else. And those great candidates you're looking for are already on LinkedIn. In fact, according to their data, employees hired through LinkedIn are 30% more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to compared to those hired through the leading competitor. That's a big deal when every hire counts. With LinkedIn jobs AI assistant you can skip confusing steps and recruiting jargon. It filters through applicants based on criteria you've set for your role and services. Only the best matches so you're not stuck sorting through a mountain of resumes. LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant can even suggest 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time, post your job for [e-mail] Prof. Then then promoted to use LinkedIn Jobs new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com Prof. To post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

[Prof G]

I'd like to pivot to what I think is probably the most relative to its implications and importance for women and globally in the Middle east, what feels like proportionally undercovered and that is Iran. I'd be very curious to get your thoughts on Iran and how the west and different groups and the media are responding to it.

[Sam Harris]

Well, it is undercovered suspiciously so. I think that could be changing as we speak today, but up until this moment, up until this very hour, it's really been a fairly telling silence from the mainstream media. I think the reason why it's undercovered is probably twofold. One is the instability. There seems to be a feather in Trump's cap with respect to foreign policy. I mean, you can only imagine that our support of Israel and our joining in the bombing of Iran has been the proximate cause of this. And if that winds up being a good thing, it seems inconvenient for many of Trump's detractors. It's not inconvenient for me. I mean, I obviously despise Trump and Trumpism and 95% of what he's been about as president. But I can readily admit that some things he's done have been good. And one of the things is to be fairly uncompromising with respect to defending open societies and Israel against this specific species of enemy, which is global jihadism and the culture that supports it. And the variant in Iran that has been a genuine tyranny for nearly as long as you and I have been alive, since 1979 is something that we should have always supported the uprisings against. I think it's scandalous how mealy mouthed Obama and Biden were on that front. I mean, the Iranians have been showing a lot of courage, especially Iranian women periodically to try to fight for their political equality going back many years and under democratic governments. We have really been shamefully silent. And that probably leads to the second reason why. Obviously Trump isn't the explanation for why Obama and Biden couldn't have supported Iran more or the Iranian people more. And there it's this lingering moral confusion left of center around Islam and Islamism and jihadism and not wanting to draw too clear a line against the problem of theocracy there. Right. I mean, Islamic theocracy is a deal breaker for the west and for open societies. This is crystal clear. Right. And I mean, now we have the spectacle of the UAE announcing, I don't know if you saw this, but the UAE recently announced that they will no longer support their own students studying abroad in the UK for fear that those students will be radicalized on British campuses by the Muslim Brotherhood. Right. That's how bad this is. That's how blind we have been to the infiltration of our own institutions by this ideology. We have to get our heads screwed on straight around this. And Trump, for all of his flaws and for all of the flaws of the people around him, I mean, truly awful people around him, just psychopaths and grifters and know nothings and incompetence, the general shape of their corruption and their self stealing and their unprofessionalism still leans in the direction of sanity on this point. Right. There's just not much tolerance for jihadism and Islamism coming out of out of both within the west and coming from societies like Iran. And so I think Trump is a very uncertain ally for everyone, including Israel, given his aptitude for corruption and just pure self interest and just his distractibility. But thus far, he's been better than many people could have hoped and certainly than many than really any Democrat would have been expected to be, at least at this moment. I hold out hope that it'll be a different story in 2028, but I do think Trump has been better on this issue than we would have any right to have expected Kamala Harris to have been. And yeah, caused me a fair amount of pain to admit that, but I just think it's true.

[Prof G]

Are you familiar with Elica Laban?

[Sam Harris]

No, no.

[Prof G]

She's a really impressive. She's an author or just a commentator, but I saw some content of hers. It kind of reminded me of you. And she has something she calls the moral color code. And it's not about the oppression of people or how severe or widespread the oppression or the horror is. It's about the color of the skin of the oppressor that mandates or deems the reaction from the west and progressive media. And she uses Iran as an example that the left goes into moral paralysis when the oppressor is brown. And that if you look at what's happening in Iran, Iraq, Sudan, you know, on and on and on, versus that inspires a muted reaction versus an oppressor that's conflated with being rich and white, specifically Israel, that they're just entirely different reactions. And I thought of you. Any thoughts?

[Sam Harris]

Yeah. If one thing can be said for certain on this front, is that the world doesn't much care. I mean, the west and the liberal west doesn't much care when Muslims kill other Muslims, really, in any number. I mean, there are instances where you can point to hundreds of thousands of dead in Syria and Yemen and Sudan, but the world really cares when Westerners do it. And the world especially cares when Jews do it. That's the thing that just lit up our information landscape after the war in Gaza started, or in fact, before it started. Merely the prospect of Israel retaliating against the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust. Right. We had people supporting Hamas before Israel had made a move in response. It's just everything is upside down here. Something like two thirds of countries have an origin story that is similar to Israel's in the sense that map makers just simply drew lines on paper without much regard for the lives of the people living within those frontiers. Their countries formed the same year as Israel, like Pakistan, who have similar origin stories. But only Israel has to defend its right to exist. Only Israel has to continually litigate this. And the United nations has passed more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. These countries include places like Yemen and Sudan and Syria, countries that have perpetrated actual genocides. So none of this makes any sense. This is just the only interpretation that makes sense of it is antisemitism in some form based on some rationale that goes unexpressed. So, yeah, this issue has pretty much destroyed the moral intuitions of the left. And it's not only a problem for Israel or for Jews. I mean, this just gets mapped onto our domestic politics. We're living in a country where when you hear that some act of violence occurred on a subway car, say, and someone was killed, someone, there were many innocent bystanders, and someone was killed. You can describe it as exhaustively as you like. I mean, you can tell people exactly what happened, how it escalated, whether there were weapons involved, who was the attacker and how he behaved moments before and after, et cetera. You can describe everything about it, every morally and legally salient detail. But Something like half of our society won't know quite how they feel about what you've just described until you tell them the skin colors of the people involved. Was the attacker white or black? Was the victim white or black? That's just obscene. This is just a flaw in our moral and social psychology, and we have to figure out how to get over it. And unfortunately, left of center, I mean, in Democratic politics, you still have this misapprehension that identity politics is somehow worth preserving, that we have to keep trumpeting the primacy of identity and insinuate race and racial concerns and other identitarian concerns into every instance. And if we can't get over that left of center fairly immediately, I think 2028 is going to be a story of President Vance or whoever's adjacent to him in the Republican Party. And yeah, that's fairly scary, Joe.

[Prof G]

You feel it. And I'll give you an example. I also want to acknowledge that I probably had a lot of. Well, I know I had a lot of advantage because of my identity and through the 90s, raising money and E commerce and, you know, it just didn't hurt to be a white guy with a white heterosexual guy with a shaved head raising money in Silicon Valley relative to other groups. I have really sensed lately, and I'm pretty sure that you must sense this, with my book talking about an aspirational code for masculinity or the struggles that men face, I've come to the conclusion I'm the wrong messenger. Because why dude of my age talking about men and any means that is sympathetic towards them is just. Just evokes a gag reflex from the left. It just. And I'd like to think, or I'm hoping it's not my arguments. I thought, I think it is. Some of it's my identity. And I've come to the conclusion that I'm just maybe the wrong messenger. Do you feel like your identity gets in the way of your message?

[Sam Harris]

Oh, it certainly does. Doesn't get in the way of my stating it, but it gets in the way of the audience hearing it. There's no question. And again, that's a real cultural flaw at this point. It is in large measure what has given us Trump and Trumpism. I blame the left as much as I blame the right for Trump and Trumpism. I can speak endlessly on either topic. But there's something more galling about the left's culpability here because it's so unnecessary. It's such a spectacular own goal. Right? I mean, it should be so easy for us to champion our values of political equality and to fight for them and to resist bigotry of every form, whether it's racism or misogyny or transphobia or whatever it is, right, we can resist all of these things while remaining sane and intellectually honest. But the Democratic Party has been so captured by its activists, which is probably 8% of Democrats at best. The pandering to the loudest and most hysterical of the far left has to stop. And I hope we reach the high water mark somewhere around 2024. But we'll know as we get closer to the midterms, I expect.

[Prof G]

I want to pivot the example used of Britain, basically. It's interesting that the UAE and several Gulf nations are much more freaked out, wary, concerned about radical Islam than many Western governments. If you got a call from, I don't know, name your Senate Intelligence Committee or Congressional Congressional caucus, whatever, and they said, sam, we see this as a real threat. What do you think in terms of specific policy recommendations would you make to address the threat?

[Sam Harris]

It's a tiny number of committed jihadists. But if you're going to talk about the wider culture of support for jihadism, the wider culture of people who think that really it is incumbent upon any God fearing Muslim to wage war against the infidel, at least in some way at some point, or to support those who do, and that infidels and apostates and Jews are fit only for the fires of hell, and that we really want to follow Muhammad's example and have a very muscular attitude towards spreading the one true faith to the ends of the earth. That's a much larger footprint. We need an honest conversation about this. What we need to provoke is a, a kind of Renaissance, Reformation, civil war, depending on the context within the Muslim world, against jihadism and against a 7th century attitude toward theocracy. And we're just nowhere near being able to do that, especially on the left. I mean, on the right you have people who are willing to speak honestly about the threat, but they are Christian nationalists and fascists. They are their own problem with respect to demagoguery and dogmatism and even aspiring theocracy. So that's obviously unhelpful, but it's just true, as David Frum has now famously said, that if liberals won't enforce borders, fascists will. And we need a left that understands that open societies are vulnerable to what Karl Popper called the paradox of tolerance, which is that the tolerance of open societies can be used against them to subvert them from within. And Islamists and Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood are very clear eyed about this. I mean, they have for now generations been working to subvert open societies from within by the very levers that we want to protect free speech and tolerance of diversity. And they've managed to frame any criticism of dangerous ideas within Islam as bigotry. So even if you're fighting for the equal rights of women and girls in a country like Tehran, where women are being imprisoned or even killed for just showing their hair, this notion of Islamophobia, it manages to frame those concerns, those genuine civil rights and humanitarian concerns as a form of bigotry. And it's not a form of bigotry. Criticizing Islam as a system of ideas is no more a form of bigotry than criticizing communism as a system of ideas. And it's not at all analogous to antisemitism I could easily described to you, but it's mistaken for bigotry against a people based on indelible characteristics like race and ethnicity. And it simply isn't right. Islam is a system of ideas that now exists in at least 100 countries and it has some attitudes toward things like the rights of women and free speech and the freedom to change your faith that are deeply anachronistic and dangerous. And we have to be honestly criticizing these ideas.

[Prof G]

Okay, so you get a call from the chair of the U.S. senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Tom Cotton, and the vice chair, Senator Mark Warner. And they say, Sam, we hear you. Whether it's 20 million or 60 million, what do we do? What specific policies do you think that you would recommend to the select committee that they consider implementing?

[Sam Harris]

Well, we should empower genuine secularists and apostates, ex Muslims, wherever we can. I mean, there's no one more articulate on this topic than ex Muslims. I mean people from these various cultures about whom the identity politics game cannot be played. Right? So half the people listening to to us right now are beginning to whinge about two white guys talking about this. And this is just Islamophobia, Right? So what you really need for this conversation to run through, if it can in left of center circles, is to have an ex Muslim from the Arab world or from Pakistan or some relevant place who speaks the language, who knows what is being said behind closed doors, not in English, who knows exactly how deep antisemitism and misogyny and other noxious variables run within the teachings of Islam, who can't be snowed on these topics. And you need to empower those people. And then you need to Find the genuine liberals and genuine secularists within the Muslim world. And that is very, very hard. It's not that they don't exist, but it's difficult. All the definitions of terms change when you get into these cultures. And to talk about fundamentalism is not the same as talking about fundamentalism in a Christian context in America. And so we need to provoke again a kind of renaissance and reformation. And when push comes to shove, a civil war in places where jihadism and Islamism are very, very threatening. And unfortunately, that's increasingly in places in the West. And we go to sleep on this issue. It just takes the next terrorist atrocity to wake us up for a time, the next Charlie Hebdo massacre or Bataclan attack in a country like France. Then all of a sudden we take this issue seriously. But all of that has a certain half life and we go to sleep again. Generally speaking, we need to recognize that we don't want more Islamists and jihadists societies that has immigration implications, that has immigration implications that are uncomfortably. That have uncomfortable echoes of the kinds of bigoted and crazy things someone like Stephen Miller will say, right? So when Stephen Miller or Donald Trump will say, we don't want any more Muslims from shithole countries, there's a kernel of truth in that. You have to cut through the bigotry and moral insanity that those guys just radiate from their pores. But there is a kernel of truth. We don't want any more true believers who have no intention of assimilating in the west, in our open societies. And people do come here with no intention of assimilating. That's just a fact. It's not even a secret. You can just read the documents that are have Muslim Brotherhood signatures on them attesting to this. And then we have our own internal organizations like the Council of American Islamic Relations that left of center get treated by journalists like they're the Muslim version of the ACLU or the naacp. But they're actually stealth Islamist organizations that have direct ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. So it's. And you have the fact that a country like Qatar, the country of Qatar, is the largest funder, the largest foreign funder of American universities at this point. It's genuinely sinister, right? There's nothing benign about that. And left of center people are reliably confused on this subject. And the confusion is not going to age well. But crucially, Muslims who really want to live in open societies and want to support secular values that make that possible will be the first people to recognize the danger of certain of their co religionists. Right? And it's the fear that they won't that needs to be examined, right? I mean, like we have this fear on the left that if you speak too honestly about what's really in the holy books and talk about how dysfunctional all that is, you're going to alienate all the good Muslims, right? Well, if that's the problem, then we have a much bigger problem than even I'm willing to admit, right? No, no. The good Muslims, the sane ones, the ones who want to live the way we want to live, in tolerant, open societies, are not going to be alienated by an honest discussion of the doctrines around apostasy and blasphemy and homosexuality and jihad that really exist within the tradition and which really have to be kind of theologically recontextualized and disavowed and sidelined politically in our societies. And if that's not on the menu for most Muslims, then we have then it's going to be a very, very dark future. That's not the future I expect, but that's the future that people seem to fear when they when they want to castigate someone like me as an Islamophobe for the things I just said.

[Prof G]

We'll be right back.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Support for the show comes from Grammarly. Do you know what it feels like to have something tailor made? A jacket, a suit, a pair of jeans? It's transformative because once you find something that fits you to a D, you just can't go back to a generic feel. That's kind of how it works at Grammarly. They have features that are tailor made for working professionals so you can get all of your writing done from start to finish, all in one place. Grammarly brings more polish and impact to your emails, presentations and proposals without needing to switch between tools and tabs, all while amplifying your voice and moving your ideas forward. Your time is valuable and you don't want to waste it on some some second rate program. That's why Grammarly is designed to help professionals with real time writing support on any project, email and more. When you open a new doc, start typing right away or ask Grammarly's AI chat for help anytime, whether to kick off your ideas or polish them. One easy place to get quick help from AI whenever you're writing, sign up for free and experience how Grammarly can elevate your professional writing from start to finish. Visit Grammarly.com podcast that's Grammarly.com SL podcast.

[Explainer Host]

Some of this video coming out of Minneapolis is telling a story about the surge of ICE agents that started last week after Renee Good was killed.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

Another controversial video has emerged of ice. It turns out the people being arrested were US Citizens.

[Sam Harris]

These are observers making sure that kids can walk home from school without being taken apart by the horrible Gestapo that we have here. A group of men approached a woman at a bus stop, pulled her aside, and then walked her into a vehicle.

[Explainer Host]

The polling is also telling a story. Support for ICE is dropping and more Americans than ever before, 46% told economist YouGov pollsters they want ICE abolished. Meanwhile, the messaging from the White House is that ICE has immunity. So what does that mean for the people, some of them citizens, that ICE agents are dragging out of cars and workplaces and off of streets around Minneapolis? That's on Today explained. We air every weekday.

[Jerry Lee Intro Host]

This week I'm chatting with Jerry Lee, the career wizard and co founder of Juan Salting, who left Google to help millions land their dream jobs. Jerry gets brutally honest about the career myths that are keeping you broke, why six figures may not be the flex it used to be, and the exact three steps you need to take right now if you're dreading your job search in this spooky market. Plus, he's spilling the tea on the worst resumes he's ever seen, his biggest money lesson, and why he's giving away free career resources to his 3.5 million followers when he could be charging for everything. Whether you're hoping to lock in that promotion, pivot to something new, or finally crack six figures, Jerry's breaking down the real strategies that actually work. Get ready for an unfiltered conversation about building the career and the bank account you actually want in 2026. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.

[Prof G]

We're back with more from Sam Harris. So you've been very generous with your time and as we wrap up here and there's no way to make this altitude change elegantly, but whenever we get together, one of the things I enjoy the most is talking about, talk about erectile dysfunction. That's just a given at our age. But I'm just curious, any observations or thoughts you want to share about raising teenagers and your observations around having teenagers?

[Sam Harris]

I do think that they can be more sophisticated than we might expect in navigating this space because, I mean, it's evolving so fast and they're digital natives in a way that we're not. I'm humbled by how much control we don't have. The research seems to suggest that any Pretension that you are going to really impart your view of the world and your interest to your kids beyond just giving them your genes and their kind of native. Native interests and aptitudes is fairly forlorn. I mean, it's just not what the research shows. I mean the research shows that for basically anything of interest psychologically and as a matter of character, it's like 50% genetic and 50% environmental. But the environment is not your parenting, right. So it matters who their friends are, it matters what school they go to to some degree. It matters the culture that gets in. But we have very little control over that. I've noticed, right. Like you pick a nice. Like in the most privileged case you get your. You struggle to get your kid into a private school that you hope is going to be good, but really you have no control over what that looks like. And you have no control over the kids. Teachers they wind up getting. And there are many disappointments to be had on that front and surprises. And you can't pick their friends and their friends turn out to be good or bad, depending. And it really is just a great spin of the lottery wheel, right? It's just the roulette wheel. It's just not a. Control is not obvious, but good intentions can be right. We really live with the character of our intentions here. That's what colors your mind with respect to your moment to moment engagement with other people. And if you love your kids and you want them to thrive and you delight in their creativity, you're going to have an experience of parenting which is beautiful. Despite the fact that you really don't have a lot of control over the world or their lives in the world.

[Prof G]

If you can think of them. Give me one or two things that your wife and your daughters think of you that is in stark contrast to what people think about you publicly.

[Sam Harris]

Oh well. I mean, I can be the silly dad in a way that would be unrecognizable to my audience if, you know. Yeah, the home videos of me with the cats or with my daughters I think would show a face of me that would fairly astonish my audience. Those videos are never getting out. But yeah, they exist. But I mean, there is something I do. As you can tell from the hour we've already spent, I can get into a zone where because of the topic and because of my thoughts on it, I'm in an orbit that doesn't allow for many of the other sides of my personality to come through or at least for whatever reason, I don't allow it or it just doesn't happen. And I remember being quite amazed that the first time my wife Annika came on my podcast, I forget what episode it was. I mean, it was not an early episode. It might have been like episode 100 or something, or maybe 80 was the first time that my audience had ever heard me laugh. And, you know, it was like some kind of religious revelation. I mean, like, the response to it was just insane. So anyway, I mean, that's. Yeah, I'm a peculiar podcaster, I guess, but I think a reasonably fun dad, and my girls could probably attest to that.

[Prof G]

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist philosopher, bestselling author and host of the Making Sense podcast and also the silly dad. Sam, I always enjoy these conversations and appreciate your time. I know how in demand you are. Really. Again, thanks so much for your continued good work.

[Sam Harris]

Yeah, always. Always happy to talk to you.

[Prof G]

This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our associate producer is Laura Gennar. Cami Reek is our social producer. Ju Bros is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the profit pod from Prof. G Media.