#393 — Is History Repeating Itself?

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Simon Sebag Montefiore about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the history of the Jews, and the rise of global antisemitism.

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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. There you'll also find our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts
0:27.2	to anyone who can't afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made
0:31.4	possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here,
0:36.1	please consider becoming one.
0:50.0	I am here with Simon Sebag, Montefiore. Simon, thanks so much for joining me.
0:57.0	It's great to be with you finally. Yeah, yeah. We've been on a WhatsApp thread together for quite some time.
1:03.3	We won't divulge the other attendees, but it's great to finally meet you, however, remotely.
1:09.3	You have written these just marvelous magisterial histories.
1:13.4	I'm reading two simultaneously, but you've written many others,
1:19.4	but the two I'm reading, Stalin, the Court of the Red Tsar, and Jerusalem, the biography,
1:25.8	really combined, they offer just an amazing lens through which to look at the present.
1:33.3	My interest in talking to you as a historian is to help me worry about the present and the near future. And I think you're a uniquely well placed to do that, given your expertise in both Russian history
1:38.3	and the history of the Middle East.
1:40.3	Before we jump in, can you just give me kind of a potted intellectual biography? What have you,
1:45.3	what do you consider your areas of focus as a historian? You know, my background was I did history
1:51.3	at Cambridge University. Then bizarrely I went into banking for a short disastrous career. And then I
1:59.9	went out to the Soviet Union as it disintegrated in the early 90s.
2:05.6	And so that was really in my training ground.
2:08.0	And that was a brilliant place, a fascinating place to see an empire falling apart.
2:15.0	And I think for a young historian to see with their own eyes an empire falling apart. And I think for a young historian to see, to see with their own eyes,
2:19.4	an empire falling apart is the best training you can have better than books. And so that was a
	...

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