Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

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-leads a project on 21st century disinformation and co-teaches a course on democracy. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Her most recent book is The New York Times bestseller, Twilight of Democracy, an essay on democracy and authoritarianism. She was a Washington Post columnist for fifteen years and a member of the editorial board; she has also been the deputy editor of The Spectator and a columnist for several British newspapers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among many other publications. Website: anneapplebaum.com Twitter: @anneapplebaum    David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy, his tenth book. Frum spent most of his career in conservative media and research institutions, including the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. He is a past chairman of Policy Exchange, the leading center-right think tank in the United Kingdom, and a former director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. In 2001-2002, he served as a speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush. Frum holds a B.A. and M.A. in history from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. Website: davidfrum.com Twitter: @davidfrum   George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about American politics, culture, and foreign affairs. He is the author, most recently, of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. He is also the author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of The Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Hitchens Prize), and seven other books.   Barton Gellman, a critically honored author and journalist, is a staff writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at the Century Foundation in New York. He is the author, most recently, of Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. His awards include The Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy for documentary filmmaking, and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Website: bartongellman.com Twitter: @bartongellman   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.

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.  

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 demonize billionaires, but is it really possible to become that wealthy without perpetuating the evils of capitalism?How do you guard yourself against cognitive bias?Can mindfulness provide relief in the case of extreme suffering (e.g. after the death of a child)?

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.

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 doing good, and other topics. Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. He is also the CEO of Alameda Research, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm. Forbes has described him as "the richest person in crypto" and "one of the richest people under 30 in history." What is more remarkable is that he set out to make this money for the purpose of giving almost all of it away to the most effective charities, and to thereby do as much good in the world as he can. He was an early adopter of the Giving What We Can Pledge, and he is now one of the more prominent people in the effective altruist community. Sam is the son of two Stanford law professors, and he received a degree in physics from MIT. Website: http://ftx.com Twitter: @SBF_FTX 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.

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 mandates, boosters, what would happen in a worse pandemic, and other topics. Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab and is the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2006, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.  He is the author of several books—Connected: The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, and most recently Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. Website: www.humannaturelab.net  Twitter: @NAChristakis    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.

Oliver Burkeman, author of "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals," discusses our relationship to time with Sam Harris. They talk about the perils of efficiency, the illusion of time as a resource, work-life balance, social isolation, and a modern Sabbath.

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 Henry Dale Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, and leads research groups at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging and Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. He has published over 75 peer-reviewed papers in and won multiple awards for his research on metacognition, including the Wiley Prize in Psychology from the British Academy in 2016, the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Psychology in 2017 and the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal in 2019. His book Know Thyself: The Science of Self-awareness was published by Basic Books in 2021.   Twitter: @smfleming Web: metacoglab.org  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.

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, sleep across species, learning and memory, mental health, dreams as therapy, lucid dreaming, heart-rate variability, REM-sleep behavior disorder, meditation and sleep, sleep hygiene, different types of insomnia, caffeine and alcohol, sleep efficiency, bedtime restriction, cognitive-behavioral therapy, napping, sleep tracking, and other topics.

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 experiment, effective altruism, valuing the future more than the past, the power of contrast, false ideals of happiness, polyamory, money and status, the role of the imagination, boredom, the power of apology, and other topics. Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, 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 Sciences. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of six books, including his forthcoming, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. Website: https://paulbloom.net/ Twitter: @paulbloomatyale 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.