‘Making Sense With Sam Harris’ and Ross Douthat
1/1/20261 hr 48 min
This week we’re sharing an episode of ‘Making Sense With Sam Harris.’ The author and podcaster recently invited Ross on his show to discuss religion and politics. But they debated so much more: the existence of God, the mystery of the cosmos, the limits of consciousness, moral progress and even whether demons walk among us.
Note: This recording has not been fact-checked by our team.
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSolana Pyne0:00
Hi. I'm Solana Pyne. I'm the director of video at the New York Times. For years, my team has made videos that bring you closer to big news moments, videos by Times journalists that have the expertise to help you understand what's going on. Now, we're bringing those videos to you in the Watch tab in the New York Times app. It's a dedicated video feed where you know you can trust what you're seeing. All the videos there are free for anyone to watch. You don't have to be a subscriber. Download the New York Times app to start watching.
Ross Douthat· Guest0:35
Hey, listeners, and happy 2026. I hope you're enjoying your holiday break, and while you are, I wanted to give you a little gift. The author and podcaster and controversialist Sam Harris recently invited me on his show, Making Sense. I was there, I think officially to talk about religion and politics, but we ended up debating a lot more, pretty much all of human history, the future, the nature of consciousness, the rationality of faith, the Spanish Inquisition, and even the existence of demons. Sam and I come from pretty different perspectives, but I like to think that we pretty much wrapped up all the big questions of human life in two hours together. So enjoy this episode of Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast, and we'll be back with a new episode of Interesting Times right here next week.