What have been intellectually honest and fair criticisms of your views? What is the most consequential false belief you've ever held, and how did you shake it? What is the distinction between merely consuming the ideas of others and thinking things through on one’s own? I’m concerned that I’m only hearing half the argument with respect to the views of “social justice warriors.” Will you bring someone on the podcast who can defend this position? You once wrote a fascinating article titled “Advent...
May 25, 2018•1 hr 27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Tamler Sommers about cultures of honor. They discuss the difference between honor and dignity, “justice porn,” honor killings, honor and interpersonal violence, prison and gang culture, collective responsibility and collective punishment, retributive vs restorative justice, the ethics of forgiveness and redemption, #metoo, and other topics. Tamler Sommers is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. He is the host of the podcast “...
May 08, 2018•2 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks to Bart Ehrman about his experience of being a born-again Christian, his academic training in New Testament scholarship, his loss of faith, the most convincing argument in defense of Christianity, the status of miracles, the composition of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, the nature of heaven and hell, the book of Revelation, the End Times, self-contradictions in the Bible, the concept of a messiah, whether Jesus actually existed, Christianity as a cult of human sa...
May 01, 2018•2 hr 50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Sean Carroll about our understanding of reality. They discuss consciousness, the many worlds view of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, free will, facts and values, and other topics. Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at CalTech. He received his PhD from Harvard University. He has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and the emergence of complexity. Carroll has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NAS...
Apr 21, 2018•2 hr 47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Ezra Klein, Editor-at-Large for Vox Media, about racism, identity politics, intellectual honesty, and the controversy over his podcast with Charles Murray ( Making Sense #73 ). Ezra Klein is the editor-at-large and founder of Vox. Before that, he was columnist and editor at the Washington Post , a policy analyst at MSNBC, and a contributor to Bloomberg. Twitter: @ezraklein...
Apr 09, 2018•2 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris responds to the ongoing controversy over his interview with Charles Murray and discusses his upcoming conversation with Ezra Klein. He also announces a change he will be making to the format of the podcast.
Apr 03, 2018•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Christian Picciolini about his experience as a neo-Nazi skinhead. They discuss how Christian got out of the movement, the limits of shame and forgiveness, the cult-like dynamics of white supremacy, the alt-Right, Russian support for white supremacy in the US, “fake news”, the significance of Charlottesville, the SPLC, and many other topics. Christian Picciolini became a white supremacist at the age of fourteen and went on to become the leader in the notorious H...
Mar 25, 2018•2 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Rebecca Goldstein and Max Tegmark about the foundations of human knowledge and morality. Rebecca Goldstein is a MacArthur Fellow, a professor of philosophy, and the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Her latest book is Plato at The Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away . Twitter: @platobooktour Max Tegmark is a professor of physics at MIT and the co-founder of the Future of Life Institute . Tegma...
Mar 19, 2018•2 hr 54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Robin Hanson about our hidden motives in everyday life. They discuss selfishness, hypocrisy, norms and meta-norms, cheating, deception, self-deception, education, the evolutionary logic of conversation, social status, signaling and counter-signaling, common knowledge, AI, and many other topics. Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a Phd in soc...
Mar 12, 2018•2 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast What are your thoughts on the Lawrence Krauss situation? Will you create a way for listeners to nominate and vote on podcast guests? Who are the philosophers that have most inspired you? My experience in meditation seems to increase my feeling of self. Can you say something about this? How does intelligence correlate with wellbeing? How should society deal with destructive drugs like methamphetamine? What are your thoughts on Stoicism? Can you further discuss the misgivings you have regarding Jo...
Mar 07, 2018•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Preet Bharara is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. His office prosecuted cases involving terrorism, narcotics and arms trafficking, financial and healthcare fraud, cybercrime, public corruption, gang violence, organized crime, and civil rights violations. In 2012, Bharara was featured on TIME ‘s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” On April 1, 2017, Bharara joined the NYU School of Law faculty as a Dis...
Feb 28, 2018•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Preet Bharara about President Trump and the Russia investigation. Preet Bharara is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. His office prosecuted cases involving terrorism, narcotics and arms trafficking, financial and healthcare fraud, cybercrime, public corruption, gang violence, organized crime, and civil rights violations. In 2012, Bharara was featured on TIME ‘s “100 Most Influe...
Feb 27, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Niall Ferguson is one of the world’s most renowned historians. He is the author of Paper and Iron , The House of Rothschild , The Pity of War , The Cash Nexus , Empire , Colossus , The War of the World , The Ascent of Money , High Financier , Civilization , The Great Degeneration , Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist , and The Square and the Tower . He is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His many awards i...
Feb 19, 2018•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Niall Ferguson about his new book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook . They discuss his career as a writer, networks and hierarchies, how history gets written, the similarity between the 16th century and the 21st, the role of social media in the 2016 Presidential election, the influence of advertising on the public sphere, Trump, the Russian investigation, Islamic extremism, counterfactuals, what would have happened if Clint...
Feb 18, 2018•2 hr 54 min•Transcript available on Metacast In his book "God is Not Great", Christopher Hitchens wrote very critically of meditation. Did you ever try to convince him that he was wrong? What is the ethical response to homeless people asking for money? What is your view of prostitution and pornography? Should they be legal? What podcasts do you personally listen to? You seem to neglect economics. Have you considered having more economists on your show? What is your process of developing your opinion on a new subject? What are your thoughts...
Feb 16, 2018•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decision theorist and computer scientist at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California who is known for his work in technological forecasting. His publications include the Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence chapter “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,” co-authored with Nick Bostrom. Yudkowsky’s writings have helped spark a number of ongoing academic and public debates about the long-term impact of AI, and he has writ...
Feb 07, 2018•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Eliezer Yudkowsky about the nature of intelligence, different types of AI, the “alignment problem,” IS vs OUGHT, the possibility that future AI might deceive us, the AI arms race, conscious AI, coordination problems, and other topics. Eliezer Yudkowsky is a decision theorist and computer scientist at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California who is known for his work in technological forecasting. His publications include the Cambridge ...
Feb 06, 2018•2 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Lawrence Krauss and Matt Dillahunty about the threat of nuclear war, science and a universal conception of morality, the role of intuition in science, the primacy of consciousness, the nature of time, free will, the self, meditation, and other topics. This conversation was recorded at New York City Center on January 13, 2018.
Jan 29, 2018•2 hr 32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with David Frum and Andrew Sullivan about the Trump presidency, hyper-partisanship, how democracies fail, immigration, the lowering life expectancy in the U.S., racism, social media, the opioid crisis, marijuana legalization, religion, what a healthy politics might look like, and other topics. David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic , his ninth book. Frum spent most of his career in conservative media ...
Jan 22, 2018•2 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Anil Seth about the scientific study of consciousness, where consciousness emerges in nature, levels of consciousness, perception as a “controlled hallucination,” emotion, the experience of “pure consciousness,” consciousness as “integrated information,” measures of “brain complexity,” psychedelics, different aspects of the “self,” conscious AI, and many other topics. Anil Seth is P...
Jan 09, 2018•3 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Eric Weinstein and Ben Shapiro about the breakdown of shared values, the problem with identity politics, religion, free will, the primacy of reason, and many other topics. Eric Weinstein is a managing director of Thiel Capital in San Francisco. He is also a research fellow at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University. Weinstein speaks and publishes on a variety of topics including, gauge theory, immigration, the market for elite labor, management of financial risk an...
Jan 05, 2018•2 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson about the current scientific understanding of meditation practice. They speak about the original stigma associated with meditation, the history of introspection in eastern and western cultures, the recent collaboration between Buddhism and western science, the difference between altered states and altered traits, an alternate conception of mental health, “meta-awareness,” the relationship between mindfulness and “flo...
Dec 28, 2017•1 hr 26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with A.J. Jacobs about religion, gossip, polyamory, health advice, our past and future selves, “radical honesty,” human genealogy, tribalism, and other topics. A.J. Jacobs is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Know-It-All , The Year of Living Biblically , and The Guinea Pig Diaries . He is the editor at large of Esquire magazine, a contributor to NPR, and has written for The New York Times , The Washington Post , and Entertainment Weekly . His most rec...
Dec 23, 2017•2 hr 49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Bret Weinstein about the moral panic at Evergreen State College, the concept of race, genetic differences between human populations, intersectionality, sex and gender, “metaphorical truth,” religion and “group selection,” equality, and other topics. Bret Weinstein has spent two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology. He has made important discoveries regarding the evolution of cancer, senescence, and the adaptive significance of moral s...
Dec 19, 2017•2 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Tom Nichols about his book The Death of Expertise . They discuss the “Dunning-Kruger Effect,” the growth of knowledge and reliance on authority, when experts fail, the repudiation of expertise in politics, conspiracy thinking, North Korea, Trump, and other topics. Tom Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, an adjunct professor at the Harvard Extension School, and a former aide in the U.S. Senate. He is also a five-t...
Dec 14, 2017•2 hr 30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with David Benatar about his philosophy of “anti-natalism.” They discuss the asymmetry between the good and bad things in life, the ethics of existential risk, the moral landscape, the limits and paradoxes of introspection, the “experience machine” thought experiment, population ethics, and other topics. David Benatar is Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Int...
Dec 05, 2017•2 hr 54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Did the Vegas shooting change your position on guns in any way? Do you ever have arguments with your wife that result in total failures of communication? What is your opinion of Dave Rubin's approach to interviewing? What have you changed your mind about recently? Is it ever morally defensible to incite violence? Do you struggle with a feeling of superiority when around other people? Will you have Elon Musk on the podcast? If you ruled the world, what would you decree? What is your argument agai...
Dec 04, 2017•2 hr•Transcript available on Metacast When you talk about creatitivity, what kind of art, music, and fiction do you like? Do you think creativity has as important of a role to play as reason in helping to maintain a civil and flourishing society? What one piece of advice would you give your 20-year-old self, your 30-year-old self, and your 40-year-old self? Have you ever considered that you may be wrong about the value–though of course not the veracity–of religion? In your opinion, why do so many Americans have trouble accepting sci...
Dec 04, 2017•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Jennifer Doudna about the gene-editing technology CRISPR/Cas9. They talk about the biology of gene editing, how specific tissues in the body can be targeted, the ethical implications of changing the human genome, the importance of curiosity-driven science, and other topics. Jennifer A. Doudna is a professor in the Chemistry and the Molecular and Cell Biology Departments at the University of California, Berkeley, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, ...
Nov 29, 2017•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast The following conversation between Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Matt Dillahunty was recorded for the Making Sense podcast at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver on November 2, 2017.
Nov 20, 2017•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
