Gary Taubes is the author of Why We Get Fat; Good Calories, Bad Calories; and The Case Against Sugar. He is a former staff writer for Discover and a correspondent for the journal Science. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Esquire, and has been included in numerous “Best of” anthologies, including The Best of the Best American Science Writing (2010). He has received three Science in Society Journalism Awards from the National Association of Sci...
May 06, 2017•2 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Charles Murray is a political scientist and author. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, The Bell Curve (coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein), sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America’s class structure. Murray’s other books include What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Human Accomplishment, and In Our Hands. His 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over t...
Apr 22, 2017•2 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Hayden is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group, a security consultancy founded by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Hayden also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Mason University School of Public Policy. He is the author of Playing t...
Apr 17, 2017•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tristan Harris has been called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,” by The Atlantic magazine. He was the Design Ethicist at Google and left the company to lead Time Well Spent , where he focuses on how better incentives and design practices can create a world that helps us spend our time well. Harris’s work has been featured on 60 Minutes and the PBS NewsHour, and in many journals, websites, and conferences, including: The Atlantic, ReCode, TED, the Economist...
Apr 14, 2017•2 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lawrence Krauss is a theoretical physicist and the director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and nine books, including the international bestsellers, A Universe from Nothing and The Physics of Star Trek. The recipient of numerous awards, Krauss is a regular columnist for newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker, and he appears frequently on radio, television, and in feature films. His most recent book is The G...
Apr 10, 2017•2 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the Washington Post and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics where she runs Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda. Formerly a member of the Washington Post editorial board, she has also worked at the Spectator, the Evening Standard, Slate, the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, the Economist, and the Independent. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Books, The...
Mar 23, 2017•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about meditation, the need for stories, the power of technology to erase the boundary between fact and fiction, wealth inequality, the problem of finding meaning in a world without work, religion as a virtual reality game, the difference between pain and suffering, and other topics. Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in history from Oxford University and is a professor in the Department of History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He specialized in World Histor...
Mar 19, 2017•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson discuss science, religion, archetypes, mythology, and the perennial problem of finding meaning in life.
Mar 13, 2017•2 hr 50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kate Darling is a leading expert in robot ethics. She’s a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, where she investigates social robotics and conducts experimental studies on human-robot interaction. Kate is also a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society Project, and is an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. She explores the emotional connection between people and life-like...
Mar 01, 2017•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic . In 2001–02, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Twitter: @davidfrum
Feb 20, 2017•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Any update on the project manager position? Sam addresses questions about conversation with Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist who was a guest on the podcast. What are your views on the so-called Muslim ban? Sam addresses questions about Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley. How do you think we can reasonably expect to break the echo chamber mentality and social media and online information? Do you think it's possible or do you expect our conversation to grow increasingly factionalized? Are yo...
Feb 15, 2017•1 hr 26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris and Joseph Goldstein answer questions about the practice of mindfulness. They discuss negative emotions, the importance of ethics, the concept of enlightenment, and other topics.
Jan 31, 2017•2 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Toronto. He formerly taught at Harvard University and has published numerous articles on drug abuse, alcoholism and aggression. He is the author of Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief.
Jan 21, 2017•2 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His works of nonfiction include In the New World, Remembering Satan, The Looming Tower, Going Clear, and Thirteen Days in September. He has also written a novel, God’s Favorite. His books have received many prizes and honors, including a Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower. His most recent book is The Terror Years: Fro...
Jan 15, 2017•2 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Richard Dawkins at a live event in Los Angeles (second of two). They discuss Richard’s experience of having a stroke, the genetic future of humanity, the analogy between genes and memes, the “extended phenotype,” Islam and bigotry, the biology of race, how to find meaning without religion, and other topics.
Jan 10, 2017•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Maajid Nawaz is a counter-extremist, author, columnist, broadcaster and Founding Chairman of Quilliam – a globally active organization focusing on matters of integration, citizenship & identity, religious freedom, immigration, extremism, and terrorism. Maajid’s work is informed by years spent in his youth as a leadership member of a global Islamist group, and his gradual transformation towards liberal democratic values. Having served four years as an Amnesty International adopted...
Jan 05, 2017•2 hr 57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Garry Kasparov spent twenty years as the world’s number one ranked chess player. In 2005, he retired from professional chess to lead the pro-democracy opposition against Vladimir Putin, from street protests to coalition building. In 2012, he was named chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Václav Havel. He has been a contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal since 1991, and he is a senior visiting fellow at the Oxford Martin School. His 2007 book, How Life Imitates...
Dec 27, 2016•2 hr 31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Richard Dawkins at a live event in Los Angeles (first of two). They cover religion, Jurassic Park, artificial intelligence, elitism, continuing human evolution, and other topics.
Dec 18, 2016•2 hr 32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field. Dr. Bloom has written for scientific journals such a...
Dec 12, 2016•2 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy and the author of the new book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World . His previous book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, was named a Foreign Affairs “Best Book of 2014.” Hamid served as director of research at the Brookings Doha Center until January 2...
Dec 05, 2016•3 hr 37 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Kirchick is a journalist and foreign correspondent currently based in Washington. He has reported from Southern and North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, across the European continent, and the Caucasus. Kirchick’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Ha’aretz, Newsweek, Time, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The American Interest, The Virg...
Dec 01, 2016•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stuart Russell is a Professor of Computer Science and Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco. He is the author (with Peter Norvig) of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Personal website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/ Story discussed in this podcast: E.M. Forster. 1909. “The Machine Stops.”...
Nov 23, 2016•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Deutsch is best known as the founding father of the quantum theory of computation, and for his work on Everettian (multiverse) quantum theory. He is a Visiting Professor of Physics at Oxford University, where he works on “anything fundamental.” At present, that mainly means his proposed constructor theory . He has written two books – The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity – aimed at the general reader....
Nov 16, 2016•2 hr 47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris talks about the results of the 2016 presidential election and the prospects of a President Trump.
Nov 10, 2016•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at The Harvard Kennedy School, a Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2005, one of the Glamour Heroes of 2005 and Reader’s Digest ‘s European of the Year for 2005. She is the best selling author of Inf...
Nov 02, 2016•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrew Sullivan edited The New Republic from 1991 – 1996 and was an intellectual architect of the campaign for marriage equality. He is the author of The Conservative Soul and Virtually Normal . Sullivan’s blog, The Dish, pioneered online journalism from 2000 – 2015. He is at work on a collection of essays and a book on the future of Christianity. Andrew Sullivan. “I Used to Be a Human Being.” New York Magazine. September 18, 2016....
Oct 26, 2016•2 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He’s the author of Animal Liberation , The Most Good You Can Do , and many other books. His most recent book is Ethics in the Real World. He is also the co-founder of The Life You Can Save , a nonprofit devoted to spreading his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty. Website: www.petersinger.info Twitter: @PeterSinger  ...
Oct 21, 2016•2 hr 58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and the holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption. He has held Visiting Associate Professorships at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and the University of California–Irvine. Saad has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. His works include The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Porn...
Oct 06, 2016•2 hr 48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris reads and discusses the third chapter of “The End of Faith.” Topics include: Christianity, Judaism, the Inquisition, witchcraft, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust.
Sep 27, 2016•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam address questions regarding his Brazilian jiu-jitsu practice: Do I still train? What belt do I have? Why do I think the sport is so addictive? Can you expand on the topic of free will? What is the difference between Eckhart Tolle and Osho? According to Dan Harris' book, you seem to give credence to the idea that Tolle might actually have had a true spiritual experience while Osho is your go-to example for the fake guru and yet their books and ideas seem almost identical. Why podcast rather t...
Sep 13, 2016•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
