The Power of Concepts

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Tamar Jacoby: There's sort of three levels at which you could address this problem. I mean, one is just to be mindful of the anxiety whenever it arises. But there's a third piece, which is you should also just have more experience speaking in public and begin to feel good about it.Jacoby: And then you can become you can begin to reduce its power over you. He says that once you learn how to be mindful, you can interrupt that. It provides moments of real relief from the suffering component.

Sam Harris returns to the podcast to talk about meditation and his new Waking Up meditation app. What are the goals of mindfulness practice - stress reduction and greater focus, or something much deeper? Can it cure David's existential dread? Tamler's fear of his daughter going away to college? Can sustained practice erode the illusion of self? Is that even something we'd want to do? What if it diminishes our attachment to people we love? And what is the self anyway? Is Sam a defender of panpsychism? So many questions... Plus, the ethics of creating talking elephants by curing them of their autism through bonding and possibly mounting. (Seriously.)

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