“People should have a default view that God is probably watching them, like, right now — as they podcast.” — Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat is a columnist at The New York Times and the author of seven books, and one of the few writers who can carry an argument across the country’s deepest divides and still be read on both sides. He converted to Catholicism as a teenager and has built a career making the case for God, and against the meritocracy, to readers who mostly disagree with him. In 2008, before the Tea Party and well before Trump, he and Reihan Salam wrote a book arguing that the Republican Party’s future belonged to its downscale, culturally conservative voters. They had the coalition right and the policy wrong, and the gap between the two still bothers him. In this conversation, he makes a new set of calls: belief in God is more reasonable than it was a century ago, consciousness as we live it is a supernatural experience, meritocracy and magnanimity cannot really coexist, Harvard should admit qualified students by lottery and then admit far more of them, and the university that made him more ambitious was not good for his soul.
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I grew up in the church - my father was a Methodist and UCC minister, and my mother was an editor at a religious book publishing company. So when I read Ross Douthat’s new book, Believe, I recognized his intellectual arguments for why everyone should believe in God as exactly the kind of internal dialogue I’ve had with myself lo these many years.
Ross went to Harvard, Class of 2002, and his first book, Privilege, was about the experience, so he has a point of view about the place I now help run. His criticism is sharp, and I don’t always agree with it. But I appreciate the spirit of wanting Harvard to be better.
We start with the evidence for God: fine-tuning, the multiverse, and whether the arrival of machine intelligence makes the case for a creator stronger or weaker. I asked him to convince me that God exists, and also what evidence would convince him otherwise. That was fun. Then we turn to Harvard, what it does to ambitious young people, whether it was good for his soul, and what a 390-year-old university owes a country about to turn 250. We even talk about whether Harvard and other universities should admit students by random lottery. I think you’re going to enjoy this one.
Chapters
[0:00:00] Cold open “God is probably watching you, right now, as you podcast.”
[0:00:16] Introduction A preacher’s kid reads a book about belief.
[0:01:25] Who is Believe written for? “Every book is for everyone,” and the cerebral readers Ross actually had in mind.
[0:03:17] The convert in-between Watching his parents speak in tongues, converting to Catholicism at sixteen, and the back pew where nobody bothers you.
[0:06:43] One true tradition, or a fit for your personality? Where his zeal has moved: less certainty about doctrine, more conviction that God is worth taking seriously.
[0:12:21] What kind of preacher’s kid were you? David’s Methodist childhood, and giving up on the idea that he would ever know.
[0:14:25] Pascal’s wager and the 52% problem Whether you can live as if God exists without believing it, and why that zone tends to collapse.
[0:20:00] What would make you less likely to believe? Fine-tuning, and the multiverse as the best available alternative to God.
[0:22:16] Complexity from simplicity The watchmaker, beautiful equations, and whether mind comes before matter.
[0:29:00] Does machine superintelligence strengthen or weaken the case for God? Philosophical zombies, Dawkins and “Claudia,” and why consciousness, as we experience it, is a supernatural experience.
[0:32:45] Privilege, two decades on Has Harvard changed? The careerist monoculture, and a generation more anxious about it than his was.
[0:40:07] “Move Over Rush Limbaugh” A Crimson profile, an ironic quote, and a future mother-in-law’s first impression.
[0:42:05] “Harvard wasn’t good for my soul” Corrupted, or allowed himself to be corrupted? Places have a spirit, and the spirit of Harvard from 1998 to 2002.
[0:45:25] Ambition toward what? Nurturing ambition without pretending it isn’t there, and pushing it in a moral direction.
[0:48:36] Meritocracy versus magnanimity The privilege you’re not allowed to feel, and the one virtue the old aristocracy had.
[0:49:03] Eccentricity and the type-A trap The Yale Political Union versus the Harvard IOP, Alex Karp’s The Technological Republic, and the elite that no longer has a project.
[0:54:58] Admission by lottery? Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit, and whether the common-app crapshoot is already half the experiment.
[0:56:22] Should America have a ruling class? Representativeness against draining local leadership, and why the Sun Belt makes him optimistic.
[0:59:45] Make Harvard bigger Admit more students, build satellite campuses, and why Elon Musk should have founded the Stanford of Texas instead of buying a social media site.
[1:01:24] Grand New Party and the Trump mystery Sam’s Club voters, the 2008 diagnosis that came true, and the prescription that didn’t.
[1:05:44] Why the policy never followed the diagnosis Only so much money, Trump himself, and the China shock they underrated.
[1:07:47] Is the book a roadmap after Trump? Family policy, falling birthrates, and the new dilemmas AI is about to create.
[1:10:30] Votes for parents The crankish, possibly correct idea of letting parents vote on behalf of their kids.
[1:12:14] Ben Sasse and civic virtue Why a civics requirement needs a shared story about the American past before it can be taught.
[1:17:09] The case for synthesis Describing ideas you don’t hold, and why everyone, left and right, would benefit from 10% more magnanimity.
[1:19:19] Is Harvard a force for good? “Probably not, overall,” and what an American university owes its country.
Guest bio
Ross Douthat is a columnist at The New York Times and the author of seven books, including Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class, and Grand New Party (with Reihan Salam). A former senior editor at The Atlantic, he is also the film critic for National Review and hosts the Times Opinion podcast Interesting Times. At Harvard he concentrated in History and Literature and wrote a column for The Harvard Crimson, graduating in 2002. He lives with his family in New Haven.
Mentioned in this episode
Books
Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious by Ross Douthat
Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class by Ross Douthat
Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam
The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel
The Technological Republic by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska
People
Pope John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) — the conservative-Catholic settlement Douthat entered under
Pope Francis — the era that unsettled it
William James — invoked on analyzing religious experience
Blaise Pascal — Pascal’s wager
Richard Dawkins — on a seemingly conscious AI
Raj Chetty and John Friedman — research with David Deming on elite-college admissions and who becomes a leader
Michael Sandel — Harvard political philosopher
Alex Karp — Palantir co-founder and author
Reihan Salam — co-author of Grand New Party
Ben Sasse — former senator, subject of Douthat’s recent Interesting Times interview
Also referenced: Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk
Organizations and institutions
Ideas and concepts
Fine-tuning of the cosmos and the multiverse
Philosophical zombies (“p-zombies”)
Parent-proxy voting, formally “Demeny voting”
The “Sam’s Club voters” thesis (from Grand New Party) and the China shock
Further reading and listening
“Move Over Rush Limbaugh,” The Harvard Crimson (2001)
Isaac Chotiner’s profile of Douthat, The New Yorker (2023)
Podcast: Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Douthat’s interview with Ben Sasse: “How Ben Sasse Is Living Now That He Is Dying” (April 9, 2026).
Tanner Greer’s critique of The Technological Republic (2025)
Credits
Host: David Deming, Danoff Dean of Harvard College
Executive Producer: Denise Koller Consulting Producers: Tim Smith and Jonathan Palumbo Produced by: Cabin 3 Media — Katie Toulmin, Producer; Justin Callahan, Director of Photography / Editor
