Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

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Today I'm speaking with Matt Taibi. Matt is a writer for Rolling Stone magazine,

and he was a winner of the 2008 National Magazine Award for columns and commentary. He has written

many books, including The New York Times bestseller is The Great D'Arrangement, Griff Topia, and The

Divide. And in this episode we focus on the state of journalism and the vascularism and polarization

of our politics. We discuss the controversy over inviting Steve Vannon and then disinviting him

to the New Yorker Festival. We talk about monetizing the Trump phenomenon, the Chimal Kashoggi

murder, the Kavanaugh hearing, the Rolling Stone reporting on the UVA rape case,

the viability of the political center, the 2020 presidential election, the Russia investigation,

our vanishing attention span, and many other topics. Anyway, many of you have requested that I get

Matt on the podcast. Please enjoy my conversation with Matt Taibi.

I am here with Matt Taibi. Matt, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

So we haven't met, but I've been a fan of your work for quite some time, and no doubt we have

friends and commons, so I haven't figured that out yet, but I'm sure we're in some similar orbit

of some large and dangerous object now. Definitely.

...