#490 — Lies, Bulls**t, and the Rule of Law

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Preet Bharara** (0:25)
Sam Harris, welcome back to the show. How are you?

**Sam Harris** (0:27)
I'm good. Great to see you, Preet. It's been a while.

**Preet Bharara** (0:29)
It's been a while and I'm just trying to figure out if things are the same, if they've gotten better, if they've gotten worse. I don't want to talk about politics just yet.

**Sam Harris** (0:38)
Okay.

**Preet Bharara** (0:38)
Something that's been on my mind, I know is on your mind. One of the things that you're known for is your commitment to and dedication to and concern about good faith, debate and discussion, right? Is that a fair statement?

**Sam Harris** (0:52)
Yeah, sure.

**Preet Bharara** (0:53)
That's one of the reasons you have a podcast, that's one of the reasons I have a podcast. So before we talk about how political debate unfolds, because that's a subspecies of overall conversation and debate, there are discussions on college campuses, there are discussions in people's homes, there are discussions at Thanksgiving, cable television, podcasts, you name it. Has the quality of discussion, we love to say, you hear this all the time, and I heard it 20 years ago and 30 years ago also, that the quality of dialogue has gone down.
Is that true or do we just reinvent a reason to be concerned and critical and annoyed every few years?

**Sam Harris** (1:33)
No. Well, I think both things are also true. Those aren't mutually exclusive, but I do think it has gone down for some obvious reasons. I think the information siloing of born of social media and the fragmentation of culture as a result of that, that has preceded a pace for the last 20 some-odd years. I think people are reading less and what they read is shorter and less carefully argued. I think much of what people are consuming is, if not AI slop entirely, it's the slopification born of hot takes and frankly, podcast conversations such as this.
I think you and I are-

**Preet Bharara** (2:17)
Hopefully, we're okay.

**Sam Harris** (2:19)
Yeah, we're not going to be displaying the most egregious sins of the format here, but so many podcasts are just a matter of the host and the guest bloviating without much care to observe anything like academic or journalistic or intellectual norms. They're just, we have so many podcasts that are run by comedians, and entertainers, and also just un-serious people. So the appetite for contrarianism and conspiracy thinking has been supercharged during COVID and beyond. That's one big cultural change. So there's very little respect for institutions and institutional narratives and gatekeeping and expertise.
So that unwinding has had an effect. It's not to say that there weren't reasons for it, but I think it has been in the main disastrous.

**Preet Bharara** (3:15)
I'll just take a moment to defend some comedians I know who are not unserious people before you get mail on them. You want to name names? Well, I think some of the late night hosts, I don't know if they have podcasts. I think David Letterman is not an unserious person.

**Sam Harris** (3:30)
I certainly wasn't thinking of the old guard.

**Preet Bharara** (3:32)
Stephen Colbert is not an unserious person. There are some other comedians, I won't name them.

**Sam Harris** (3:36)
Yeah. Well, I'll name one.
He was a friend, but I'm quite worried about his cultural influence. I've named him on many other podcasts, but I think the effect that Joe Rogan's podcast has had has been, I mean, there's been many things, but it has been politically disastrous, I think. I just think, I think it's not just what's happened on his podcast, but the instruction that every other independent broadcaster on earth has taken from his example, I think it's been terrible.

**Preet Bharara** (4:06)
But sort of the odd thing is, you would think people would have a base level of credulousness about things that they hear. And in both regards, with respect to people that folks think they shouldn't agree with, someone from a different party, they don't believe anything that comes out of the mouths of the people who are on the other side of the fence, which I sort of get that. But you couple that with simultaneously taking his gospel everything said by the folks on their own side of the fence. That's true with Joe Rogan.