Alright, so big announcement.
Sam Harris is going to be on the program.
The interview has actually already been recorded.
Announce it before it got recorded because
uh, I wanted to make sure that it actually
was going to happen to be totally honest.
And sometimes these things can get moved around
when the guest is a very busy person as is
Sam, the genesis of the interview is that
I guess people in Sam's audience told him
that he should appear on my show and he got
in touch and we set it up.
There were no guidelines put in place in terms
of what topics should be discussed or anything
like that.
I was free to ask anything I wanted.
And the plan is we're going to publish some
short clips over the weekend and then the
entire interview will air next week.
It's a nearly hour and a half interview.
So there's a practical question about how
to include it in the broadcast shows.
We can either take almost two entire whole
shows, a significant portion of two shows
in a row.
We could split it into four pieces and do
one piece Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
That's another possibility.
In any case, the full nearly 90 minute interview
is going to be posted in its entirety without
any edits, cuts or whatever on youtube sometime
next week as well.
But I'm open to hearing from you about how
we should manage it on the show.
Some of the things that we discussed, Sam
Harris had an interesting take on how he compares
and contrasts Donald Trump and Osama bin Laden,
which you might be surprised to hear is a
comparison anybody would be making, but that
was discussed.
Uh, Sam Harris had some interesting thoughts
about Trump voters.
We talked about allegations of racism against
Donald Trump.
Um, Sam gave his views on the media landscape
including his thoughts on Fox News.
We got into guns and the sort of culture and
religion of guns as Sam Harris described it.
There was an open borders discussion about
immigration policy where we had some disagreements
and some agreements.
Sam Harris talked about reparations, which
he finds, uh, something that he would likely
support after, uh, looking at detailed plans
for it.
But believes is a strategic mistake for Democrats
to be talking about going into 2020 we talked
about uh, terrorist manifestos where I found
what I believed was a double standard in some
of the things Sam Harris had said.
We talked about that.
Now, my only concern, and I'm sharing kind
of a lot here about the behind the scenes.
This was a 90 minute interview and Sam Harris
has a lot to say about a lot of different
things.
Whenever I do an interview like this, I always
come away feeling as though I could have totally
prevented the interview from moving forward
by arguing to the end.
Every single disagreement that I have with
the guest, and it's just not a practical way
to do the interview, but every time I do this,
I know that there was going to be some portion
of the audience who will write to me and they'll
say, David, the guests said x.
How did you not challenge that?
It makes you seem complicit.
And I hope my, my real hope with the Sam Harris
interview, particularly since he was very
generous with his time, is that people don't
come away focused on wow, well you talked
about these 10 things on these two, you should
have just pushed back, pushed back, pushed
back.
There's a practical nature to these things
where if I want to torpedo the interview and
prevent it from moving forward, I can do that.
But at some point it doesn't make practical
sense.
This has happened when I've interviewed academics.
This has happened when I've interviewed extremists
like Richard Spencer.
Um, so that is something I, I've sort of been
thinking about since the interview was filmed.
So Sam Harris interview some clips on Youtube
over the weekend full thing next week.
Other big news.
We are going to be taking a six month vacation
off of the show starting next week.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
We just took a vacation recently and we just
had labor day.
So we're here for a while, but I will be coming
to you over the next couple of months from
a few different conferences and different
locations which I will be announcing as we
get closer to them.
We are also almost ready to do around of website
updates.
There are going to be some updates to the
member section to make it more functional
based on popular demand.
One really often requested feature is an easier
way to gift subscriptions right now to gift
a subscription on our website.
You basically go in and you just act as if
you're signing up as someone else you put
in the recipient's name and the recipient's
email, but your payment information and it's
kind of clunky.
So we're exploring either some kind of coupon
code, like you can buy a coupon code.
If you want to buy someone a $60 membership,
you buy a coupon code, you give it to them,
then they can apply it to their membership.
Uh, we're thinking of a couple of other ways
as well.
If you have specific website suggestions for
David pakman.com that you want implemented,
this is a very, very good time to let me know.
Uh, and then lastly, I've gotten a lot of
inquiries about what's happening next week
with the third Democratic presidential debate,
which is on ABC and I believe it's ABC Univision.
Uh, as many of you know, I started live commentary
of the second debate, which was on CNN last
month.
And within two minutes CNN shut me down, gave
us a copyright strike on Youtube.
It was a fiasco.
Their vice president of corporate communications
or something publicly shamed me for wanting
to do the commentary and we ended up over
on twitch at twitch.tv/david Pacman.
And since I've been streaming a lot on twitch,
so here's my plan.
I am formally working through the process
to get white listed by ABC to do live commentary
of the debate.
It could be a 1% chance that that works or
a 90% chance.
I don't know.
I'm working with my youtube rep to try to
get ABC to say, David, it's okay for you to
live stream on youtube and do live commentary
of the debate if they okay that that will
be the plan because that's where we have the
largest audience.
We could conceivably have 20, 30, or 40,000
live concurrent viewers if we were allowed
to carry out that full stream.
If I am not able to get that approval, then
I will, I want to be sure I'm wording this
a responsibly, then I will likely go to other
platforms, um, and structure the commentary
in a different way.
And I will have announcements for you next
week, but the debate is down to just one stage
10 candidates on one stage.
It'll be Thursday evening.
Don't know what time it is.
I'm guessing it starts sometime between seven
and nine.
Probably seven or eight, I would guess.
Um, 10 candidates one stage on September 12th,
and one way or the other.
I will do everything, everything, everything
that I can to um, bring that, uh, live coverage
to you.
Uh, as we always try to do with these debates.
Last thing.
Uh, if people have, so the response from the
theme shows when we've been on break has been
phenomenal.
When we were on actual show vacation a few
weeks ago, we ran a full week of themed shows
about extremism and white supremacy, socialism
versus capitalism, automation, et Cetera.
Labor Day.
At the beginning of this week we did a theme
show about healthcare.
People are loving these.
The response has been more positive than anything
else we've ever done on off days.
The problem is there is not a limitless list
of topics on which we have the material to
pull together a theme show with.
So my question to you is, can you send me
some suggestions for what other themed shows
we should look at doing?
Um, space travel is one that might work.
We've got enough material.
Uh, medicine would be another one.
So not like healthcare, but actual medicine,
like interviews we've done related to medical
advancements, cancer treatment, et Cetera.
Mental health, maybe I should actually be
writing these down.
Mental health would be another one.
We've done enough now about everything from
g video game addiction to psychosomatic conditions.
To the stigma of mental health.
Maybe that's another idea, but the point is
I want to hear from you.
Themed show ideas.
Best Way to get in touch is the contact form@davidpakman.com
I am also on Twitter at d pacman and the show
is on Twitter at David Pakman show.
You can reach out to me that way, but the
best way to get me your suggestions really
is the contact form@davidpakman.com let's
take a quick break, so much planned for today's
program.
I am glad you're with us on this Friday and
a Friday.
Not before yet, another long weekend,
but a Friday before.
Just a full good old fashioned week of shows
and bonus shows coming up next week
