Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic. In 2001–02, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Twitter: @davidfrum

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...

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.

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.

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 bo...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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 Sc...

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...

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, S...

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. Fo...

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 – aime...

Sam Harris talks about the results of the 2016 presidential election and the prospects of a President Trump.

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...

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...

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...

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 c...

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.

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...

William MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was educated at Cambridge, Princeton, and Oxford. He is one of the primary voices in a movement in philanthropy known as “effective altruism” and the cofounder of three non-profits based on effective altruist principles: Giving What We Can , 80,000 Hours , and the Centre for Effective Altruism . William is the...

Sam Harris reads from an issue of Dabiq, the magazine of ISIS, and discusses the beliefs and goals of jihadists worldwide.

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. He has taught previously at Boston, Harvard and Northwestern Universities, and the University of Michigan. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics (Northwestern University, 1972) and a Ph. D. in Economics (MIT, 1976). Professor Loury has published mainly in the areas of applied microecono...

Eric R. 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 and the incentivizing of risk taking in science. He can be contacted on Twitter: @EricRWeinste...