#449 — Dogma, Tribe, and Truth
Making Sense with Sam Harris
Waking Up with Sam Harris
4.6 • 29.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
Sam Harris speaks with Ross Douthat about religion, modernity, and what can steady a culture that feels increasingly unmoored. They discuss the case for faith in an age of digital disembodiment, declining birthrates, and looming AI-driven upheaval. They also debate tribalism and dogmatism, whether secular societies can generate durable moral consensus, the foundations of ethics, consciousness and well-being, mathematics as a clue to ultimate reality, and, briefly, demonology.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at |
| 0:22.2 | samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the |
| 0:27.6 | support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. |
| 0:36.8 | I am here with Ross Douthit. |
| 0:38.3 | Ross, thanks for joining me. |
| 0:39.8 | Sam, thanks for having me. |
| 0:41.2 | It's a pleasure. |
| 0:42.3 | So we've never met. |
| 0:44.3 | Am I right in thinking that? |
| 0:45.8 | We have never met. |
| 0:46.8 | Okay. |
| 0:47.8 | This is, no, this is the closest I've come to your physically embodied presence. |
| 0:51.5 | All right. |
| 0:52.0 | Well, let's see if the internet keeps us together here for the requisite hour or two. |
| 0:58.5 | Well, so I've been reading your book this week, Believe, which... |
| 1:02.5 | When did this come out? |
| 1:03.4 | It's pretty recent, right? |
| 1:04.6 | Yeah, it came out, I think, February of this year of 2025. |
| 1:08.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:09.5 | And this is where you make your case for the rationality and even necessity of religion, |
| 1:17.0 | which I think we're going to get to because I think you and I have a, |
| 1:21.7 | we share a sense that our culture is ailing, |
... |
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