Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/397-a-new-years-message-from-sam   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 explo...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/396-the-way-forward 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 dispariti...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/395-intellectual-authority-and-its-discontents 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.   Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/394-bringing-back-the-mammoth 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 wo...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/393-is-history-repeating-itself 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. Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author and historian. His books include Catherine the Great and Potemkin , Stal...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/392-technology-culture 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 i...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/391-the-reckoning 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.

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/390-final-thoughts-on-the-2024-presidential-election 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 souther...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/389-the-politics-of-risk 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...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/388-what-is-life 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, th...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/387-politics-power 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....

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/386-information-social-order 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...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/385-ai-utopia 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," t...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/384-stress-testing-our-democracy 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 po...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/383-where-are-the-grown-ups 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.   Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris crea...

Pardon the interruption. You’re seeing this message because your subscription may have expired, and you’ll need to renew it at https://samharris.org/subscribe. If you feel your account has been deactivated in error, please visit https://samharris.org/invalidfeed for detailed information. If you’re still having trouble, please don’t hesitate to reach out to support@samharris.org. We can quickly con...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/382-the-eye-of-nature 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 t...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/381-delusions-right-and-left 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 proble...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/380-the-roots-of-attention 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 meditati...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/379-regulating-artificial-intelligence 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. Yoshua Bengio is full...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/378-digital-delusions 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...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/377-the-future-of-psychedelic-medicine 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...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/376-how-democracies-fail 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 powe...

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/375-on-the-attempted-assassination-of-president-trump

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/374-consciousness-and-the-physical-world 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 cl...