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

hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will 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 samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed

to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads

on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.

So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

Today I am speaking with Graham Wood. Graham is a national correspondent for the Atlantic

magazine. He has written for the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times

and many other publications. He was the 2014-2015 Edward Armouro Press Fellow at the Council on

Foreign Relations and he teaches in the Political Science Department at Yale University.

And he's the author of the book The Way of the Strangers in Countries with the Islamic State.

And we get deep into his book and into the world view of ISIS. We use ISIS and the Islamic

State interchangeably. And we talk about his experience reporting on ISIS, the myth of online

recruitment, how to challenge the theology of ISIS. We talk about the quality of ISIS's propaganda,

and Graham reveals the identity of the most important American recruit to the Islamic State.

And we spent a long time talking about the surprising significance of Jesus and the Antichrist

under Islam. So there's a lot here and Graham is an amazing authority on these topics.

And it was a great pleasure to finally get him on the podcast. So without further delay, I bring you

Graham Wood. I am here with Graham Wood. Graham, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Good to be here. You have written this wonderful book The Way of the Strangers,

which is all about the Islamic State. It's rise and you get right up to the point where

...