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 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 Sam Harris.org. There you'll also find our

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So if you enjoy what we're doing here, this is Sam Harris. I released my second conversation with Rory Stewart last week.

Many of you found that frustrating.

I understand, especially if you are listening to it after more recent events in the UK have unfolded,

where even the Prime Minister had to give a speech about the pervasive problem of Islamism and jihadism in the UK

and how they could no longer tolerate it.

Anyway, make of that conversation what you will.

I won't further comment on it here, but I am confident that the

topic will come up again and again and again.

Today I'm speaking with Brett Stevens.

Brett is an opinion columnist for the New York Times.

He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post

and as Foreign Affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal,

for which he won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Among his other distinctions in 2022, he was banned for life by the government of Russia and can't visit that country ever again.

And we talk about Russia, among other things.

We discuss America's place in the world,

the waning Pax Americana, American isolationism,

Republican fondness for Putin, Tucker Carlson, why America should

support Ukraine, the significance of Alexi Navalny, what it would mean to properly hold Putin

...