In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jay Garfield about the illusion of the self. They discuss the default sense of subjectivity, the difference between absolute and conventional truth, interdependence, free will, subject-object duality, emptiness, the “mind-only” school of Buddhism, scientific realism and experiential anti-realism, and other topics. Jay L. Garfield is Chair of the Philosophy department at Smith College, visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at ...
May 23, 2022•2 hr 31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Douglas Murray about his new book, The War on the West . They discuss the problem of hyper partisanship on the Left and Right, the primacy of culture, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the de-platforming of Trump and Alex Jones, the new religion of anti-racism, the problem of inequality, the 1619 Project, history of slavery, moral panics, the strange case of Michel Foucault, and other topics. Douglas Murray is the associate editor of The Spectato...
May 02, 2022•2 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Eric Schmidt about the ways artificial intelligence is shifting the foundations of human knowledge and posing questions of existential risk. Eric Schmidt is a technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He joined Google in 2001 where he served as chief executive officer and chairman from 2001 to 2011, and as executive chairman and technical advisor thereafter. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and divers...
Apr 22, 2022•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris and Ricky Gervais discuss the infamous Oscar slap. We’re excited to announce the launch of the Absolutely Mental app for iOS users. All three seasons of Absolutely Mental are available for purchase on the app. Subscribers to the Making Sense podcast will hear the episode in its entirety in their subscriber feed. If you’d like to hear this entire episode for free, you can access it by downloading the Absolutely Mental app . This bonus e...
Apr 18, 2022•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks to Graeme Wood about Muhammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. They discuss the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the imprisonment of Saudi elites in the Ritz Carlton, the Vision 2030 campaign, relations with Israel, the posture of the Biden administration, energy policy, Saudi efforts to deprogram jihadists, the strange case of Musa Cerantonio, John Walker Lindh, the current condition of ISIS, the war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda, how Fi...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Ian Bremmer about the ongoing war in Ukraine. They discuss the current state of the war, the power of sanctions, Biden's "gaffe" about regime change, fear of nuclear war, the logic of mutually assured destruction, the role of China, the most likely outcomes of the war, and other topics. Ian Bremmer is a political scientist who helps business leaders, policy makers, and the general public make sense of the world around them. He is president a...
Apr 03, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about the wider implications of Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine. They discuss different forms of war, Putin’s miscalculation regarding the internal divisions of America and the EU, the problem of misinformation, international norms of behavior, the role of China, the civilizational importance of trust, globalization and de-globalization, existential risk, the role of India, Ukrainian leadership, the danger o...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Garry Kasparov about Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. They discuss Putin’s larger objectives, the perception of the war inside Russia, whether US and EU foreign policy is to blame, the expansion of NATO, American weakness, Republican support for Putin, the sanctions regime, whether the US and EU should impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, whether to openly seek regime change in Russia, how we can avoid WW3, what post-Putin gov...
Mar 10, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam shares an episode from the third season of Absolutely Mental, his audio series with Ricky Gervais. All 10 episodes have been released today (Wednesday, March 2, 2022) and are available for purchase now at AbsolutelyMental.com .
Mar 02, 2022•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Rob Reid and Kevin Esvelt discuss USAID’s new “Deep VZN” program, which aims to discover new pandemic-grade viruses and publish their genomes to the world. Esvelt estimates that there are currently around 30,000 people who could then easily build them. Rob Reid is a podcaster, author, and tech investor, and was a long-time tech entrepreneur. His After On podcast features conversations with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientists on topics ...
Feb 28, 2022•2 hr 58 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Barton Gellman, and George Packer about the ongoing threat to American democracy posed by Republican misinformation and disinformation regarding the 2020 Presidential Election and the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Anne Applebaum is a journalist, a prize-winning historian, a staff writer for The Atlantic, and a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-l...
Feb 11, 2022•2 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam responds to the controversy over his friend Joe Rogan's use of the N-word and his subsequent public apology.
Feb 07, 2022•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this Ask Me Anything session, Sam answers the following questions: What is your position on vaccine mandates, school closures, etc.? Do you think painful memories remain painful because there is something left unresolved? How can you forgive a consequential lie? Can you clarify your plans to support effective altruism with NFTs? What are your views on transgender women in sports? How can we combat disinformation and misinformation coming from friends and family? You’ve said that we shouldn’t ...
Jan 31, 2022•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Sam discusses some of the topics he has and hasn't covered, to the disappointment of many Making Sense listeners. Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it....
Jan 11, 2022•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Sam Bankman-Fried about effective altruism. They discuss how he became the wealthiest self-made billionaire under 30, what might go wrong with cryptocurrency, the Giving What We Can pledge, how SBF thinks about using his resources to do the most good in the world, how not to stigmatize wealth, wealth redistribution, norms of generosity among the ultra-wealthy, pandemic preparedness, impact through lobbying, how ambitious should we be in doin...
Dec 24, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Sam Harris speaks with Nicholas Christakis about the lessons of the COVID pandemic. They discuss our failures to coordinate an effective response, the politics surrounding vaccination, vaccine efficacy, vaccine safety, how to think about scientific controversies, the epidemiology of excess deaths, transmission among the vaccinated, natural immunity, selection pressures and new variants, the failure of institutions, the lab-leak hypothesis, the efficacy of lockdowns, vaccine mand...
Dec 14, 2021•3 hr 51 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Oliver Burkeman about our relationship to time. They discuss the perils of efficiency, being vs becoming, the illusion of time as a resource, parenting and childhood, work-life balance, the loss of leisure, the planning trap, social isolation, a modern Sabbath, and other topics. Oliver Burkeman is the author of the New York Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals , about embracing limitation and finally getting roun...
Dec 03, 2021•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Stephen Fleming about the neuroscience of self-awareness. They discuss the nature and limits of metacognition, the relationship between self-knowledge and intelligence, error monitoring, theory of mind, mirror neurons, deception and self-deception, false confidence, probabilistic reasoning, where metacognition fails, cognitive decline, calibrating one’s confidence, and other topics. Dr. Stephen Fleming is a Wellcome/Royal Society Sir H...
Nov 24, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Matthew Walker about the nature and importance of sleep. They discuss sleep and consciousness, the stages of sleep, sleep regularity, light and temperature, the evolutionary origins of sleep, reducing sleep, the connection between poor sleep and all-cause mortality (as well as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease), sleep across species, learning and memory, mental health, dreams as therapy, lucid dreaming, heart-ra...
Nov 10, 2021•4 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom about the role that pain and suffering play in living a good life. They discuss the limitations of hedonism, the connection between chosen suffering and meaning, the research of Daniel Kahneman on well-being, integrating the experiencing and remembering selves, moral motivations, the effects of parenthood on happiness, unchosen suffering, the asymmetry of loss and gain, Nozick’s “experience machine” thought exper...
Nov 02, 2021•2 hr 40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with John McWhorter about his new book “Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America.” They discuss how the “social justice” narrative of the Left has become a religion, how this new faith has taken over institutions, and what to do about it. John McWhorter teaches linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia University. He is a columnist at The New York Times , a contributing editor at The At...
Oct 27, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Making Sense 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. A...
Oct 21, 2021•3 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris reflects on the subjective continuity of consciousness, the nature of identity, and the possibility that death isn’t the end of experience. Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theo...
Oct 18, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Andrew Yang about the state of American democracy. They discuss Andrew’s run for the Presidency, the humiliations of campaigning, the manipulation of politics by the media, Andrew’s run for the mayor’s office in NYC, the power of bad incentives, open primaries, rank-choice voting, the Forward Party, the weakness of a two-party system, inequality, the child tax credit, enhanced unemployment, UBI, worries about inflation, and...
Oct 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jonas Kaplan about the neuroscience of belief change. They discuss the illusory truth effect, the backfire effect, failures of replication, “The Fireplace Delusion,” the connection between reason and emotion, wishful thinking, persuasion and the sense of self, conspiracy theories, the power of incentives, in-group loyalty, religion, mindfulness, cognitive flexibility, and other topics. Jonas Kaplan is a cognitive neuroscientist w...
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Sam shares a clip from the second season of Absolutely Mental, his audio series with Ricky Gervais. All 10 episodes have been released today (Friday September 24th, 2021) and are available for purchase at AbsolutelyMental.com .
Sep 24, 2021•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this Ask Me Anything session, Sam answers the following questions: Why won’t you discuss COVID vaccines and Ivermectin with Bret Weinstein on the podcast? What do you think about the recent prosecution of a 100-year-old Nazi in Germany? How can we understand voluntary behavior without free will? Does aid to the developing world do more harm than good? Have your views about the risk of artificial general intelligence changed in recent years? What did you think of Simon Biles’s decision to drop...
Sep 20, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris recalls his experience of September 11th, 2001, and considers the future of American foreign policy.
Sep 09, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Balaji Srinivasan about several civilizational challenges and possible paths forward. They discuss the evidence of American decline, the rise of India and China, centralizing and decentralizing trends in politics, the relationship between politics and technology, the failures of the FDA and TSA, how regulation preserves monopolies, the significance of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, the problem of cybersecurity, the Chinese government&rsq...
Aug 31, 2021•4 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this Ask Me Anything session, Sam begins by addressing the blowback that followed a recent podcast episode on “vaccine hesitancy” with Eric Topol and then answers the following questions: How can I inoculate my biracial children against identity politics? In what way is journalism broken, and how can we fix it? Have you read the research suggesting that the effects of microdosing psychedelics are indistinguishable from taking placebos? Can you comment on the degree to which Leftis...
Aug 30, 2021•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
