We are happy to have back with us, Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, philosopher, best-selling author, and the host of the Making Sense podcast, which I am told that I get name-checked,

you know, rarely, occasionally on the program.

Sometimes, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam.

Thanks for joining us.

How are you?

Yeah, it's great to see you, Don.

It's nice to know that rumors of the infringement of the First Amendment in the society of ours aren't just rumors. We have the man in flesh here. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that because, and I'm going to couch it in the state of our union, because in a few days, Donald Trump is going to deliver his first, the official state of the union, the one one the first time was not that wasn't a real one

so what's your assessment on the state of our union how is america doing well not well i i'm quite

worried about the uh the state of our democracy and and the state of our uh our media landscape

that has uh become a kind of hallucination machine.

I mean, it's, apart from anything that we might talk about or criticize with respect to the

Trump administration or the great unraveling of American stature in the world and the growing corruption and kleptocracy.

And I mean, all of that is awful and worth worrying about.

But behind all of that is this basic fact that half the country,

something like half the country, doesn't see any of that.

I mean, at least 40% of Americans seem to think that things

are going pretty well and not much is at stake. So any topic we might touch here, whether it's

infringements of civil liberties or corruption, you know, the looming risk of disorder, you know, as America retreats from its

leadership role. Much of the country, I mean, something like half the country, either doesn't

care or is totally oblivious to these concerns. I think things are going well. And the more stuff

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