Mary Katharine Ham crushes Bill Maher and Sam Harris. Great job — pithy and theatrical!

Mary Katharine Ham tries to cure Bill Maher and Sam Harris from their Trump derangement syndrome. pic.twitter.com/J51lcATOxO

— Turncoat Don (@TurncoatD) October 1, 2023

"I've been super-critical of Trump, obviously."

Every Sam Harris podcast interview for the past 7 years summed up. pic.twitter.com/LLR1nHXxXN

— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) September 24, 2023

"You're saying you're content with the left-wing conspiracy to prevent somebody being democratically re-elected as President?

That's a question provoked by something Sam Harris says in this video. His instant answer is "It's not left wing. Liz Cheney is not left wing." 

Pushed with the question, "You're` content with a conspiracy to prevent somebody being democratically elected President?" Harris stutters and gets out: "It was a conspiracy out in the open." Then: "But it doesn't matter — what part's conspiracy, what part's out in the open." More stumbling, then a retreat into outer space: "If there was an asteroid hurtling toward earth and we got in a room together with all of our friends and had a conversation of what we could do to deflect its course, is that a conspiracy?"

The video clip I'm seeing on Twitter ends there. I would respond to "Is that a conspiracy?" with Is that an analogy? 

Crack.

https://t.co/c6sbWNpKNF

— Mannie Lennox (@EmmanuelSpamer) April 30, 2022

I've been listening to the new Ricky Gervais/Sam Harris podcast.

You can get a pretty good idea of what it's like from this trailer:

 

I paid for the series after listening to the first episode, which was free. I was a little irked that it's on Spotify, which I pay for, and I had to pay even more. But it costs something like $15, and I pay $15 for books all the time. Isn't it as worthy as a book? 

I'm only interested in Ricky Gervais. I listened to the whole first episode with no awareness of who the other guy was supposed to be. "Sam." He felt like a complete nonentity to me, just a dull voice to make it so that Ricky wasn't just talking to himself. 

I was surprised to see that it was Sam Harris, a famous name that I know, though not someone... I was going to say: not someone I'd ever paid much attention to. But when I search the blog archive, I see I've blogged about him many times, usually without adding a "Sam Harris" tag. The failure to tag means that when I wrote the post, I didn't think I'd be writing about the same person again. It's odd to see that's happened so many times with this particular person — especially after my experience with the podcast, where he made no distinct impression on me!

But now he has made a distinct impression on me as the person who makes no distinct impression. I'll honor the occasion by going back to all the untagged posts and adding the tag. Then maybe all the faint impressions will congeal into something interesting. [UPDATE: It didn't.]

And the podcast is good. I recommend it. It's mainly Ricky asking the questions, Sam giving bland answers, and Ricky bouncing off Sam's answers. For example, Ricky asks Sam if he had to choose between being 3 feet taller than he is or 3 feet shorter than he is, which would he choose? Sam gives the wrong answer (taller) and Ricky drags him through the wrongness of the decision. 

ADDED: If you buy this podcast, you can listen to it on any podcast app. It's not like Joe Rogan, isolated on Spotify. That's why having to buy it separately makes sense.

"'All the answers are: I don’t think about it. And P.S. I’m dumb,' he said as a blanket reply to all my questions. I laughed."

He = Joe Rogan. I = Bari Weiss, writing "Joe Rogan Is the New Mainstream Media/Talking to the podcasting king about his monster [$100 million] Spotify deal" (NYT).

If you want to understand why podcasting is killing, he says, you first need to appreciate the world-changing, brain-rewiring transformation in how we consume information.

Reading or watching the news is no longer immersive, as it was when you sat down with a bunch of papers or in front of a living room TV. Now it is a fragmented experience, usually done on a cellphone.

“The problem,” he told me, “is that the cellphone also has YouTube videos of the craziest things ever — babies landing on cats and animal attacks and naked people.”

Why would you read a 2,000-word story about the collapse of health care in Venezuela when you can zone out with some TikToks?...

While I cook dinner I’m likely listening to Rogan, Sam Harris, “The Portal” or “Red Scare.” I go for morning walks and listen to “The Daily.” You can’t cook or walk while reading.

I agree that podcasts are better when you are cooking or brushing your teeth and so forth, but you can read a book while walking. That's about the only way I can maintain the focus to really read a book — straight through. I walk and listen to an audiobook. The immersive experience is exactly what you want on an extended walk. Maybe Bari Weiss is talking about walking in a crowded city, which needs something more snippet-y.

Anyway, I listen to Joe Rogan's podcast, and it's easy for me to see why what he does is working and also why it's so hard to do what he does, even if not thinking about it and feeling okay with the idea that you're dumb is an essential part of how it's done.

"Associating hate with [Sam] Harris is bizarre. I’ve grown fond of his preternaturally composed, hyper-rational style..."

"... on the Waking Up podcast. But when he talks about [Ezra] Klein, he is not quite himself. He can’t disguise his bewilderment. He sounds like Spock discovering his shorts are on fire. 'Captain, I have detected . . . flames and singed flesh . . . in the vicinity of . . . my perineum.'"

I'm trying to read "Ezra Klein’s Intellectual Demagoguery" by Kyle Smith at The National Review, but I've run into an atrocious men-in-shorts/Star Trek smash up and my heart cries out I don't belong here.

And I've got to say, if you wanted to be a racist — or any kind of evil devil in this world — the best approach would be to adopt a demeanor that is preternaturally composed and hyper-rational.

But I've started this post, so let me soldier on. I've avoided the Sam Harris/Ezra Klein discord for quite a while, but something made me feel that I could catch up by reading Kyle Smith:

[Harris's] tone remains steady...

Ugh... tone...

... but the words are uncharacteristically pointed. During the debate, as Klein keeps delivering lectures to Harris on the history of racist injustice and repeatedly accuses him of having a “blind spot,” you can hear Harris sighing. Does Harris — does any intelligent person — really need to be told that blacks have been victimized by racism? Of course they have been. It’s a different conversation from the one about what we do and don’t know about IQ scores.

Harris, who has to his credit a philosophy degree from Stanford, a Ph.D. from UCLA in cognitive neuroscience, and several well-reviewed books, has described himself as on the left on virtually every issue. How disorienting it must have been to find himself reclassified as a neo-Mengele and besieged by the social-media mob because he spoke with ["Bell Curve" author Charles] Murray....

If Harris is as educated and sophisticated as all that, he shouldn't have been "disorient[ed]." He should have been prepared for Klein's utterly predictable attack. Was Harris so lost in self-love — thinking he's one of the good people — that he didn't see how mean his seeming friends would be if he questioned one of the Good People's Articles of Faith?

"The anti-Trumpers need a Pope. And apparently they want it to be me. I didn’t see this coming."

"I will consider the job over the weekend and let them know my decision. If you see white smoke coming from the man-cave in my garage, it means I have accepted the position."

Said Scott Adams, responding to the response to the podcast he did with Sam Harris. Adams likes to talk about Trump as a "master persuader," to explain the methods, and he purports to be leaving questions of morality and ethics to other people.

By the way, I listened to the whole podcast yesterday...


 

... and I thought it was fantastic how — no matter how hot and desperate Harris got — Adams slipped in laterally and calmly and gave a Trump-supporting explanation — without ever really saying that he personally supports Trump. Adams is like Trump's lawyer within a dimension where law is the actual structure of the human mind.

I don't know if Trump is a master persuader, but I'm leaning toward thinking Adams is a master persuader persuading us that Trump is a master persuader. 

I "toast or roast" Andrew Sullivan.

At Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish.

I'm one of a bunch of bloggers invited to "toast or roast" Sullivan's blog. As he explained yesterday, today is his blog's 10th anniversary. He reflects on the occasion:

I'm a Catholic, so let me start with the things I am sorry for and even, in some cases, ashamed of. When you blog in real time, day by day, hour by hour, emotions can get the better of you. The blogosphere is awash in examples of invective, abuse, cruelty, accusations of bad faith, or just bluster - in part because blogging is so much more like speaking than writing and also because it addresses people in the abstract, not face to face. I am not innocent in this, and wish I could take back a few barbs, especially in the early days, when we were all discovering what this medium could do....

His greatest failure, he says "was giving in to my legitimate but far-too-powerful emotions after 9/11 and cheer-leading for a war in Iraq that remains one of the most disgraceful, disastrous and murderous episodes in the history of American foreign policy." He reaffirms that he is a conservative:

I remain deeply skeptical of government's ability to solve most human problems, but have never denied its necessity or importance in tackling the profound questions of the common good no other institution can replace. I'm a Whiggish Tory, not a pure libertarian....

I remain very proud of a few things: of my early recognition of the anti-conservative nature of the Bush administration in almost every respect - fiscal, constitutional, social...

And he reaffirms the value of unseriousness:

From '80s music video contests to our now constant Mental Health Breaks; from mischief and blasphemy and black humor, from Road Runner videos to ghetto mashups, the Dish has always had an anarchic streak, what Bodenner calls "Dishness". The sardonic awards; the reader threads that became riveting - the "cannabis closet" which will soon be a book; the wonder of that simple idea - The View From Your Window - that then became a weekly puzzle; the dialogue with Sam Harris on faith and reason; the countless faces of the day that can convey things no words ever can; the Poseur Alerts; the randomness of bear culture, beard disasters, straight anal sex, South Park out-takes, Hathos Red Alerts, baby panda sneezes ... we've created an institution here that remains alive because we really don't know what the fuck we are going to do next. And yes, I used the word "fuck". Because I fucking well can, if I want to.

Ah, yes. There are so many blogs that are no fun at all. 

What can you say about those atheists who believe in God?

I don't know. I can see the notable atheist Sam Harris is grappling with the contradiction.

Hmmm. I often click on WaPo front-page links that turn out to go to the "On Faith" page. As soon as I see that inside page, I reflexively decide I'm not going to read it! It's something about the way the front page of the Washington Post is journalistically black print on a plain white background, and then the "On Faith" page is various shades of blue. I've left the realm of reason and entered the squishy soft spot. All that blue — those words "On Faith" — those 2 smiling heads — it says: This is something for other people to read. This is some kind of specialized reading for people who want mainstream assistance in their earnest efforts to devote the appropriate amount of time to struggling gently with religion. I find that instantly off-putting.

So, you're on your own. Some atheists believe in God. Okay?

And speaking of my distaste for WaPo's "On Faith" aesthetic: I'm not buying cereal that is packaged like this:

Who is that supposed to appeal to? "Good Friends" cereal?

This high-fiber trio of flakes, twigs, and granola is absolutely delicious. For all the good things fiber does for you, it deserves to be loved.

First of all. Twigs? Second. Fiber deserves to be loved? I don't want relationship neediness from breakfast food.

And I don't like the way the paired up heads on the packaging symbolize the cereal's insistence on becoming my close friend.

If you're going to foist happy breakfast faces on me, don't be earnest about it. At least have the decency to be surrealistic:

"It is unclear whether Flew has lost the desire to reason effectively or whether he no longer cares what is published in his name."

Atheists wonder how believers can believe such things, but when atheists themselves turn into believers, can you believe them? When Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are raking in so much money writing about their atheism, what's an old atheist to do? Where's the publishing niche? Ah, there! I love that key clues are the words “beverages,” “vacation,” and “candy.”

"On some level he means what he's saying, and is making fun of himself for meaning it..."

Amba on religion and "The Colbert Report":

Colbert is something far more subtle than a fundamentalist, but on some level he means what he's saying, and is making fun of himself for meaning it by impersonating a fundamentalist's absurdly over-the-top way of saying it. No wonder Harris is baffled: it's impossible to tell where Colbert is really coming from. If you assumed he was mocking religion itself and therefore agreed with you, you'd fall into a trap.

Harris is atheist Sam Harris, and you can watch Colbert's interview with him here. Enjoy all the perplexing subtleties!