Sam Harris speaks with Jonah Goldberg about the damage Trump is doing domestically and abroad. They discuss Trump’s tariffs, Curtis Yarvin and the Tech Right, threats against Republicans who criticize Trump, why the arguments Republicans are using to defend Trump’s position on Ukraine are flawed, America’s deteriorating moral standing on the global stage, the recklessness of DOGE, why so many CEOs bent the knee to Trump, antisemitism on the Right, Trump’s plan for Gaza, worst case scenarios for ...
Mar 10, 2025•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Niall Ferguson about the current geopolitical situation. They discuss how Trump is handling the war in Ukraine, Europe’s changing relationship to the U.S., security concerns around Trump’s appointees, the economic impacts of Trump’s policies, how China views political turmoil in the U.S., whether democracy can withstand Trump 2.0, Elon Musk and X, free speech in the United Kingdom, Trump’s plan for Gaza, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is ...
Feb 28, 2025•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Katherine Stewart about her new book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy . They discuss Project 2025, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, whether the backlash against wokeness has been overblown, the asymmetric standards between right-wing and left-wing media, Trump’s appeal to evangelicals, wealth inequality, political ideology in public schools, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SU...
Feb 18, 2025•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Helen Lewis about the culture wars. They discuss the role of journalists, DEI, political polarization, feminism, transgender activism, gender roles, the Rotherham scandal, Islam and jihadism, Elon Musk and X, the future of the Democratic Party, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment ...
Feb 06, 2025•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Rick Caruso about the Los Angeles fires. They discuss how mismanagement may have contributed to the severity of the fires, who’s to blame, the practice of private firefighting, rebuilding and the future of L.A., how DEI fueled public cynicism toward government, the ethics of having immense wealth, philanthropy, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe ...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam provides an update about his experience of the LA fires and shares a few selections from the Waking Up app. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . 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 d...
Jan 21, 2025•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . 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 01, 2025•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Matthew Yglesias about the future of Democratic politics. They discuss where the Democrats went wrong, the failure of identity politics, the Left’s reaction to the Daniel Penny case, what a second Trump term might look like, immigration and the border, gender and racial disparities in crime, wealth inequality, Matthew’s “nine principles for a common sense Democrat comeback,” and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to ga...
Dec 20, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris discusses the breakdown of trust in institutions, the nature of intellectual authority, the danger of bad incentives, the epidemic of conspiracy thinking and misinformation, Trump and Elon, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . 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 a...
Dec 11, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Ben Lamm about his work at Colossal Biosciences. They discuss his efforts to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo; the difference between Colossal’s approach and Jurassic Park; the details of resurrecting the mammoth; the relevance of this work to human health; the role of artificial intelligence; reintroducing mammoths, Tasmanian tigers, and dodos back into the wild; the environmental and business case for de-extinction; and other topics. If th...
Dec 03, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Simon Sebag Montefiore about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the history of the Jews, and the rise of global antisemitism. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . 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 lif...
Nov 26, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Christine Rosen about how technology is changing our culture. They discuss the courage of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, lost practices like handwriting, tradeoffs in our use of technology, social media, conspiracy thinking, X as a platform for breaking news, the future of journalism, the importance of local news, the asymmetry right and left politically, the strange case of Tucker Carlson, the antisemitic hallucinations of Dan Bilzerian, expectations for a second Trump presidency, anti...
Nov 19, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris discusses the result of the 2024 presidential election, the lessons that the Democratic Party should draw from it, and the implications of a second Trump term. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe .
Nov 11, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Mark Cuban about the 2024 presidential election. They discuss Trump’s ethics, his apparent political indestructibility, election denialism, the influence of Elon Musk, the strengths and weaknesses of the Harris campaign, the mystery of the southern border, Trump’s immigration and deportation policies, Elon’s trafficking in the “great replacement theory,” Trump’s economic policy, Harris’s tax and healthcare proposals, the effect of tariffs, the U.S. supply chain, the proble...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Nate Silver about cultural attitudes toward risk and the state of American politics. They discuss the erosion of trust in liberal institutions, polling and political narratives, different camps of cultural elites, the influence of Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried and the fall of FTX, Gell-Mann amnesia, Christopher Rufo, why Kamala Harris can’t admit to having changed her views, a problem with strict utilitarianism, AI and existential risk, what peo...
Oct 25, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Sara Imari Walker about a scientific understanding of life. They discuss the contributions of physics to this topic, Erwin Schrödinger, the inadequacy of standard definitions of life, the prospect of "artificial" life, the role of information, constructor theory, assembly theory, the space of all possible structures, a "block universe," the existence of abstract objects like numbers, the Fermi paradox, the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe, experiments that coul...
Oct 21, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Ambassador Rahm Emanuel about the state of world order and American politics. They discuss the mystery of Japan’s economic health, U.S. competition with China, possible conflict over Taiwan and the Philippines, the significance of the South China Sea, the history of the Japan-U.S. friendship, how the Democratic Party lost its way, immigration, whether Vice President Harris needs a “Sister Souljah moment,” whether she should explain her changes of position better than she h...
Oct 15, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about his new book, Nexus , and its application to current crises. They discuss humanity’s capacity for self-destruction, democracy and dictatorship as information networks, the “naive view of information,” the advantages of fiction over truth, trust in institutions, self-correction in a democracy, truth vs. power, truth vs. order, the suicide of conservatism, fixing social media, algorithms as editorial choices, efficiency vs. inefficiency, threats to de...
Oct 07, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Nick Bostrom about ongoing progress in artificial intelligence. They discuss the twin concerns about the failure of alignment and the failure to make progress, why smart people don’t perceive the risk of superintelligent AI, the governance risk, path dependence and "knotty problems," the idea of a solved world, Keynes’s predictions about human productivity, the uncanny valley of utopia, the replacement of human labor and other activities, meaning and purpose, digital isola...
Sep 30, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Barton Gellman about election integrity and the safeguarding of American democracy. They discuss the war games he's run to test our response to an authoritarian president, using federal troops against American citizens, the difference between laws and norms, state powers to resist the federal government, voter identification and election integrity, political control over election certifications, the Bush-Gore election, the Electoral Count Reform Act, the prospect of public...
Sep 23, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris talks about the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the cesspool of X, Tucker Carlson’s conversation with Darryl Cooper, freedom of speech, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . 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 t...
Sep 17, 2024•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Richard Dawkins about his new book The Genetic Book of the Dead , the genome as a palimpsest, what scientists of the future may do with genetic information, genotypes and phenotypes, embryology and epigenetics, why the Lamarckian theory of acquired characteristics couldn't be true, how environmental selection pressure works, why evolution is hard to think about, human dependence on material culture, the future of genetic enhancement of human beings, viral DNA, symbiotic ba...
Sep 06, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with “Destiny” (Steven Bonnell) about politics and public debate. They discuss how he approaches debate, “Trump derangement syndrome,” January 6th, why Trump’s norm violations don’t matter to many people, misadventures on the information landscape, social media and the problem of being too online, Islam and conflict in the Middle East, the difference between the far left and the far right, the lack of sane conservative policies to counterbalance the left, whether the pendulum i...
Aug 26, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Amishi Jha about attention and the brain. They discuss how attention is studied, the failure of brain-training games, the relationship between attention and awareness, mindfulness as an intrinsic mental capacity, the neurological implications of different types of meditation, the neural correlates of attention and distraction, the prospects of self-transcendence, the link between thought and emotion, the difference between dualistic and nondualistic mindfulness, studying n...
Aug 23, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Yoshua Bengio and Scott Wiener about AI risk and the new bill introduced in California intended to mitigate it. They discuss the controversy over regulating AI and the assumptions that lead people to discount the danger of an AI arms race. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe . Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. T...
Aug 12, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Renée DiResta about the state of our information landscape. They discuss the difference between influence and propaganda, shifts in communication technology, influencers and closed communities, the asymmetry of passion online and the illusion of consensus, the unwillingness to criticize one's own side, audience capture, what we should have learned from the Covid pandemic, what is unique about vaccines, Renée's work at the Stanford Internet Observatory, her experience of be...
Aug 02, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Dr. Jennifer Mitchell and Dr. Sarah Abedi about recent developments in research on psychedelics. They discuss the history of this research and the war on drugs, recent setbacks in the FDA approval process, MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the challenges of conducting this research, allegations of therapist misconduct, new therapeutic models for mental health treatment, psychoneuroimmunology, "non-psychedelic" psychedelics, good and bad trips, ...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris and Anne Applebaum discuss the nature of modern autocracies and how democracies fail. They discuss the power of ideas, why autocracies seek to undermine democracies, cooperation among dictators, how Western financial experts and investors have enabled autocracies, how Putin came to power, the failure of engagement and investment to create political change, what’s at stake in the war in Ukraine, Trump’s charisma, the current symptoms of American democratic decline, the ideologues aroun...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe .
Jul 16, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Harris speaks with Christof Koch about the nature of consciousness. They discuss Christof’s development as a neuroscientist, his collaboration with Francis Crick, change blindness and binocular rivalry, sleep and anesthesia, the limits of physicalism, non-locality, brains as classical systems, conscious AI, idealism and panpsychism, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), what it means to say something “exists,” the illusion of the self, brain bridging, Christof’s experience with psychedelics, ...
Jul 09, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
