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

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please consider becoming one. Well, Trump is off to a running start with his appointments or desired appointments.

Some have been comparatively normal,

and some have been not.

I guess the ones that have provoked the most alarm are Pete Hegseth at Defense,

Tulsi Gabbard for the Director of National Intelligence,

Matt Gates for Attorney General, and Robert Kennedy,

Jr. for Health and Human Services. I guess I'm going to abide by my policy, which is to

not react until something actually happens. There's some debate about whether all of these

are legitimate appointments or trolls of some kind.

On its face, it looks like affirmative action for cooks and ghouls.

But let's see what happens.

We'll see if these survive confirmation or get appointed during a recess.

Let's wait and see.

Today I'm speaking with Christine Rosen.

Christine is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for

commentary magazine. She's also a senior editor at the New Atlantis and a fellow at the

University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies and Culture.

And she's the author of a new book, The Extinction of Experience, Being Human in a Disembodied World.

...