Making Sense with Sam Harris
Making Sense with Sam Harris

#492 — The Second Plane, 25 Years Later

September 9, 2026

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5 min read

The Second Plane, 25 Years Later

The morning of September 11, 2001, Sam Harris was a neuroscience PhD student who had spent the previous decade studying religious belief and meditation. When the second plane hit the South Tower at 9:03 AM, he watched the world change. "One plane could have been the act of a lunatic, but not two," he says. "The severely mentally ill don't coordinate to commit mass murder, and most people who coordinate to commit mass murder aren't suicidal." That moment posed a question that Harris believed would permanently reshape Western consciousness: what set of ideas could get sane people to murder thousands of strangers and kill themselves in the process? Twenty-five years later, he argues that the answer remains both obvious and systematically denied.

The Argument That Never Needed Revision

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:20) **25-Year Retrospective: The Second Plane and the Power of Bad Ideas** - Sam Harris opens with a personal reflection on the morning of 9/11, arguing that the second plane crashing into the South Tower proved the attack was an act of sincere religious belief, not madness or accident.
  • 2 (06:00) **The Left’s Denial vs. the Evidence** - Harris argues that Western liberals immediately and persistently refused to accept the religious motivation of the 9/11 hijackers, despite clear evidence from their own writings and surveillance.
  • 3 (07:11) **Acknowledging the Cost of the Response** - Harris grants that the U.S. response to 9/11 caused immense damage, including two decades of war, trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of deaths, but insists this does not erase the nature of the original enemy.
  • 4 (11:09) **The “Win” That Bought a Reprieve** - Harris notes that in one sense, the war on terror succeeded: jihadis have killed only a few hundred people inside the U.S. in 25 years, and counter-terrorism efforts stopped about 100 attacks—but this success created a dangerous forgetfulness.
  • 5 (13:06) **October 7th as a Continuation** - Harris argues that the October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel is the direct continuation of 9/11, driven by the same religious certainty about martyrdom and paradise.
  • 6 (13:58) **The Collapse of Progress: From Apologetics to a New Religion** - Harris argues that the Western reaction to October 7th was worse than in 2001, because the old confusion (political root causes) has been replaced by a new pseudo-religious identity framework.
  • 7 (16:03) **The Rise of Islamo-Leftism** - Harris names the political alliance between the far left and Islamists, pointing to figures like Zoran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed as evidence that entanglement with Islamism is now an asset on the left.

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Guests on this episode

Sam Harris

Show Notes

On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, Sam discusses the significance of the second plane, the writing of The End of Faith, the failure to take jihadist belief seriously, the costs of the war on terror, the abandonment of America's Afghan allies, the continuity between 9/11 and October 7th, the rise of Islamo-leftism, the misuse of "Islamophobia," and other topics.

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