#453 — AI and the New Face of Antisemitism

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Judea Pearl about causality, AI, and antisemitism. They discuss why LLMs won't spawn AGI, alignment concerns in the race for AGI, Pearl's public life after the murder of his son Daniel, the post-October 7th shift toward open anti-Zionism, the overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the misuse of "Islamophobia," Israel's fracture under Netanyahu, confronting anti-Zionism in universities, and other topics.

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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
0:21.9	at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely
0:27.3	through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider
0:31.7	becoming one. Well, I'm here with Judea Pearl. Judea, thanks for coming into the studio. Great to see you. It's the second time, isn't it? Yeah, I came to you last time. Yeah, I was in your office. I actually didn't look to see one that was, but that's a few years ago, certainly. That might be. That was for your book, the Book of Why.
1:11.6	The Book of Why, which kind of wraps up for a popular audience, all of your work on causality and logic of that, which we'll touch briefly because I want to have to ask you about AI, given that you're one of the fathers of the field, but that's not really our agenda today, but we'll start near there.
1:16.4	But I want to talk to you about your new book. You have a new book,
1:22.1	coexistence and other fighting words, which I'm sorry to say I have not yet read, but that will give you the ability to say anything to a naive audience on this topic. I'm sure it covers much of
1:30.2	the ground I want to cover with you because I'm like you, I think, very concerned about cultural
1:35.5	issues and the way that we've seen a rise of anti-Semitism on both the left and the right.
1:41.7	And we're now seeing the condition of Israel as a near pariah state,
1:47.6	you know, on the world stage.
1:49.1	Briefly, let's start with your background.
1:50.7	Where were you born and what did your parents do?
1:53.6	Well, I was born in a little town called Bnabrak, which is seven and a half miles north of Tel Aviv.
2:01.7	And it was established in 1924 by my grandfather,
2:07.5	Chaim Perl, with 25 other Hasidic families who came from Poland
2:12.5	and decided that it's time to go back to where they belong.
2:19.3	So when did they move to Israel, your parents? In 1924.
2:21.3	My father, my father family came in 1924.
2:23.3	And when were you born?
2:25.3	In 1936.
2:27.3	Okay. So, and what did your parents do?
	...

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