Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events. Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live. Harris's work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
Sam Harris speaks with psychologist Paul Bloom about the limitations of empathy as a guide to moral reasoning, why empathy is a bad metric for measuring one’s character, cognitive biases, and other topics. Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with a special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art...
Jul 29, 2015•2 hr 30 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Sam Harris and Dan Carlin (host of the Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts) discuss American interventionism, the war on terror, and related topics. Read the transcript.
Jun 27, 2015•2 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Jerry A. Coyne is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. He received a B.S. in Biology from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Harvard University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of California at Davis, he took his first academic position as assistant professor in the Department of Zoology at The University of Maryland. In 1996 he joined the faculty of The University of Chicago and has been there ...
May 19, 2015•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Sam Harris reflects on his failure to have a productive conversation with Noam Chomsky. Audio Transcipt: I wanted to do another “Ask me Anything” podcast, but I know I’m going to get inundated with questions about my conversation with Noam Chomsky , so in order to inoculate us all against that—or, at least, to make those questions more informed by my view of what happened—I wanted to do a short podcast dealing with the larger problem, as I see it, of having conversa...
May 14, 2015•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast
How does the struggle of atheists for acceptance compare with that of women, blacks, gays, etc? How long until true equality arrives? What is your view on laws that prevent people from not hiring on the basis of religion? Can you say something about artificial intelligence and your concerns about it? What do you think of Cenk Uygur's attack on you recently? How did you become such a good public speaker? Why do we have to meditate sitting up? Does your view that there's no free will give you symp...
Apr 25, 2015•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Sam Harris discusses the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult and argues that we all have something important to learn from them about the power of belief. The following videos are discussed: Audio Transcript: Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Today I’m going to talk about cults, mostly. I’ve been in a cultish frame of mind in the last week—and getting over bronchitis, so my apologies for my voice being even raspier than it usually is. But I’ve been pay...
Mar 24, 2015•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Sam Harris responds to the charge that “militant” atheism is responsible for the murder of three Muslim students in North Carolina. Note 2/18/15: Here was Reza Aslan’s response to this podcast: Starting to get creeped out by how obsessed Sam Harris is with me & @ggreenwald -as tho we’ve given him a 2nd thought http://t.co/RSbvjck96Q — Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) February 18, 2015 @neiltwit @ggreenwald @SamHarrisOrg oh no was I mean to your Sam? did I hurt you...
Feb 17, 2015•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Joseph Goldstein has been leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and the Forest Refuge. Since 1967, he has practiced different forms of Buddhist meditation under eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet. His books include The Experience of Insight, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma, and Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening. For more information about Joseph, please visit www.dharma....
Oct 28, 2014•2 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast
I once participated in a twenty-three-day wilderness program in the mountains of Colorado. If the purpose of this course was to expose students to dangerous lightning and half the world’s mosquitoes, it was fulfilled on the first day. What was in essence a forced march through hundreds of miles of backcountry culminated in a ritual known as “the solo,” where we were finally permitted to rest—alone, on the outskirts of a gorgeous alpine lake—for three days of fasting...
Aug 20, 2014•1 hr 27 min•Transcript available on Metacast
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT [Note: This is a verbatim transcript of a spoken podcast. However, I have added notes like this one to clarify controversial points. —SH] I was going to do a podcast on a series of questions, but I got so many questions on the same topic that I think I’m just going to do a single response here, and we’ll do an #AskMeAnything podcast next time. The question I’ve now received in many forms goes something like this: Why is it that you never criticize Israel?...
Jul 27, 2014•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast
I’ve noticed a happy trend in online video: People have begun to produce animations and mashups of public lectures that add considerable value to the spoken words. If you are unfamiliar with these visual essays, watch any of the RSA Animate videos, like the one below: People have also taken excerpts from my own lectures and combined them with stock footage. For example: I would like to encourage this behavior. To that end, I am offering the following voice-over track, adapted from one of m...
Nov 06, 2013•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Drugs are another means toward this end. Some are illegal; some are stigmatized; some are dangerous—though, perversely, these sets only partially intersect. Some drugs of extraordinary power and utility, such as psilocybin (the active compound in “magic mushrooms”) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), pose no apparent risk of addiction and are physically well-tolerated, and yet one can still be sent to prison for their use—whereas drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, which...
Jul 04, 2011•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast
