Is America Heading for a Debt Crisis? An Economist Explains @samharrisorg

Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

Sam Harris speaks with economist and Substack writer Noah Smith about the U.S. national debt, wealth inequality, and the economic consequences of AI. They discuss the mechanics of debt and inflation, the case for fiscal austerity, why the U.S. squandered low interest rates, modern monetary theory, how AI may restructure labor and ownership, the anti-billionaire politics of the American left, the degrowth movement and its failures, demographic decline and fertility trends, the role of smartphones in eroding democratic culture, and other topics.

Noah Smith is an economics blogger and former finance professor. He writes a Substack called Noahpinion.

Website: http://noahpinion.blog

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$The Limits of AI Understanding Sam Harris speaks with Judea Pearl about causality, AI, and antisemitism. They discuss why LLMs won’t spawn AGI, alignment concerns in the race for AGI, Pearl’s public life after the murder of his son Daniel, the post-October 7th shift toward open anti-Zionism, the overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the misuse of “Islamophobia,” Israel’s fracture under Netanyahu, confronting anti-Zionism in universities, and other topics. Judea Pearl is the Chancellors professor of computer science and statistics at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Cognitive Systems Laboratory. He is known internationally for his contributions to artificial intelligence, human reasoning and philosophy of science. He has received numerous scientific awards, including the 2012 ACM A.M. Turing Award (often described as the Nobel Prize of computing). Judea is the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. He also writes and lectures on Jewish identity and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002 2025 collects his essays on these topics. Website: https://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at https://samharris.org/subscribe/ OR become a channel member to access episodes on YouTube. For those who cant afford the full subscription price, we offer partial scholarships https://www.samharris.org/subscribe/scholarship Stay updated on new episodes, essays, and events — subscribe to Sam Harris’s free newsletter: https://samharris.org/newsletter-signup/$

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