#1241 - Sam Harris

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Five, four, three, two, hello, Sam Harris.

Sam Harris (0:07)

Hey, man.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

Good to see you.

Sam Harris (0:08)

Happy to be here.

Joe Rogan (0:10)

I listened to your podcast with Jack. Let's just get right into the Jack stuff. Because I listened to your podcast with Jack, and I found something very, when I did my podcast with Jack, first of all, was not anticipating the blowback that I received. It was stunning. But he, what I thought was, I was just gonna have a conversation with this guy, be fun, see what it's like to run this gigantic network that helps people communicate. You okay, Jimmy?

Helps people communicate and distribute information worldwide. What is it like to start something like that up, and have it become what it is? How have you managed to try to keep up with it, and what have the headaches been?

Apparently, people online, particularly the people that want to comment about this, all they wanted to know about was censorship. And that was an issue with me. There was a question with me, but it was a far bigger question for people online. They felt like that I tossed iem softball questions, and that I didn't press him. And then I listened to your podcast, and one thing about Jack is, very smart guy, very nice guy, but he talks in a very slow and methodical way. And when you ask him a question, he takes these routes, and if you don't want to jump in and press him, like you're in this weird situation where he's not totally answering your question, but he's talking about the same subject that you talked to, like, for instance, you brought up Louis Farrakhan.

Sam Harris (1:36)

Right.

Joe Rogan (1:37)

Like, how is Louis Farrakhan in good standing on the platform, and someone like, you know, fill in the blank, Milo Yiannopoulos or Laura Loomer or whoever it was, they get kicked off. He never got to that. He went around and around and around with you. And he recognized this after the podcast.

I received a lot of blowback. He received a lot of blowback. So I contacted him and he said he would be more than happy to come back on again and address all these things. And I said, okay, what I'd like to do is address specific instances of people being censored.

And he said, okay, what I'll do is I'll bring in someone from the company that's in charge of that stuff.

So I'm starting to put together a picture of what it's like to be a CEO of something as big. And he's also a CEO of Square. He runs the Cash App. There's a lot of stuff going on there, right? So he's obviously busy. How much day-to-day involvement does he actually have and who gets censored and why they get censored and how much is he willing to share about that? So we're gonna find out in the next follow-up podcast. But I got accused of everything from being a shill to being a cuck to being a... And there's also an issue that you've managed to avoid, wisely so, of advertising, the Cash Apps and Advertiser on my podcast. So because the Cash Apps and Advertisers are on my podcast.

Sam Harris (2:53)

Right, the man had you by the throat.

Joe Rogan (2:55)

Exactly, I think that.

Sam Harris (2:55)

Couldn't ask all those great questions that were queued up.

Joe Rogan (2:57)

The reality is, those are the questions I would have asked. Now that's hard to say, because no one's gonna believe it. But those are the questions I would have asked. And I tried not to be too confrontational with the guest, but in hindsight, I probably could have pressed more, particularly on people like Kathy Griffin, calling for doxing for the kid with the MAGA hat on, with the Native American. There's quite a few, but I noticed that, well, what was your experience like with it?

Sam Harris (3:26)

Yeah, so it's interesting, because you and I have, we had different interviews because they were timed differently. I mean, it's an interesting topic, because this opens the door to all the ways in which our podcasts are different. I mean, you stream live, I sit on my podcast for at least a week. I mean, in Jack's case, it was like two weeks before I released it.

So I did my interview with him before this flurry of interviews with him came out. I mean, there was a Rolling Stone interview, there was a, I think maybe a Huffington Post interview had come out, but basically, there was nothing out there. So I had no real examples of how he dealt with these questions.