Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Peter Bergen about the US exit from Afghanistan, the resurgence of the Taliban, and his new book, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” They discuss the Neo-isolationist consensus on the Right and Left, the legitimacy of our initial involvement in Afghanistan, our ethical obligations to our Afghan allies, Biden’s disastrous messaging, the weakness of the Afghan army, the advantages of the Taliban, the implications for global jihadism, the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, how Osama bin Laden came to lead al-Qaeda, bin Laden’s sincere religious convictions, our failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora, the distraction of the war in Iraq, the myth that the CIA funded al-Qaeda, bin Laden’s wives, his years of hiding in Pakistan, his death at the hands of US Special Forces, and other topics. Peter Bergen is the author or editor of nine books, including three New York Times bestsellers and four Washington Post best nonfiction books of the year. His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. Bergen is a Vice President at New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and a national security analyst for CNN. He has testified before congressional committees eighteen times about national security issues and has held teaching positions at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University. Website: peterbergen.com Twitter: @peterbergencnn 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 Dambisa Moyo about the state of the world. They discuss public goods, economic growth, capitalism, American economic history, bad public-policy choices, inequality, tax avoidance among the wealthy, government inefficiency, the problems with democracy, the breakdown of trust in institutions, failures of transparency, voter participation, future automation and unemployment, identity politics, the reality of racism in America, the problems with affirmative action, competition with China, and other topics. Dambisa Moyo is a prizewinning author of the New York Times bestsellers Edge of Chaos, Winner Take All, Dead Aid, and How Boards Work. Born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia, Moyo holds a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University and a master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She worked for the World Bank as a consultant, at Goldman Sachs, and serves on a variety of corporate boards. She regularly contributes to the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times and was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine. She lives in New York City and London. Website: dambisamoyo.com Twitter: @damibisamoyo   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 Eric Topol about vaccine hesitancy and related misinformation. They discuss the problem of political and social siloing, concerns about mRNA vaccines, the Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA, the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines, vaccine efficacy vs effectiveness, the Delta variant, the misuse of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), concerns about long-term side effects from vaccines, bad incentives in medicine, ivermectin, government and corporate censorship, vaccine mandates, and other topics. Eric Topol is the Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research. As a researcher, he has published over 1200 peer-reviewed articles, with more than 290,000 citations, elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine. His principal scientific focus has been on the genomic and digital tools to individualize medicine—and the power that brings to individuals to drive the future of medicine. In 2016, Topol was awarded a $207M grant from the NIH to lead a significant part of the Precision Medicine (All of Us) Initiative, a prospective research program enrolling 1 million participants in the US. Prior to coming to lead the Scripps Research Translational Institute in 2007, for which he is the principal investigator of a flagship $35M NIH grant, he led the Cleveland Clinic to become the #1 center for heart care and was the founder of a new medical school there. He has been voted as the #1 most Influential physician leader in the United States in a national poll conducted by Modern Healthcare. Besides editing several textbooks, he has published 3 bestseller books on the future of medicine: The Creative Destruction of Medicine and The Patient Will See You Now. His latest book Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again came out in 2019. Topol was commissioned by the UK 2018-2019 to lead planning for the National Health Service’s integration of AI and new technologies. Recently, he has been reporting insights and research findings for COVID-19 on his popular Twitter feed. Website: drerictopol.com  Twitter: @EricTopol  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 Jeff Hawkins about the nature of intelligence. They discuss how the neocortex creates models of the world, the role of prediction in sensory-motor experience, cortical columns, reference frames, thought as movement in conceptual space, the future of artificial intelligence, AI risk, the “alignment problem,” the distinction between reason and emotion, the “illusory truth effect,” bad outcomes vs existential risk, and other topics. Jeff Hawkins is a scientist whose life-long interest in neuroscience led to the co-founding and creation of Numenta, a team of scientists and engineers applying neuroscience principles to machine intelligence research. His research focuses on how the cortex learns predictive models of the world through sensation and movement. In 2002, he founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, where he served as Director for three years. The institute is currently located at U.C. Berkeley. Previously, he co-founded two companies, Palm and Handspring, where he designed products such as the PalmPilot and Treo smartphone. Jeff has written two books, On Intelligence (2004 with Sandra Blakeslee) and A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (2021). Jeff earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1979. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003. Website: numenta.com Twitter: @Numenta 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 David Buss about the differential mating strategies of men and women. They discuss the controversy that surrounds evolutionary psychology, the denial of sex differences, cross-cultural findings in social science, the replication crisis in psychology, the biological definition of sex, why men and women have affairs, ovulatory shifts in mate preference, sex differences in jealousy and infidelity, the sources of unhappiness in marriage, mate-value discrepancies, what we can learn from dating apps, polyamory and polygamy, the plight of stepchildren, the “Dark Triad” personality type, the MeToo movement, and other topics. David Buss is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Buss previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. He is considered the world’s leading scientific expert on strategies of human mating and one of the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology. His books include The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating; Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy is as Necessary as Love and Sex, The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill, and Why Women Have Sex (with Cindy Meston). His new book When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault uncovers the evolutionary roots of conflict between the sexes. Buss has more than 300 scientific publications. In 2019, he was cited as one of the 50 most influential living psychologists in the world. Website: davidbuss.com Twitter: @ProfDavidBuss    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. Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jason Fried about the recent controversy over the “no politics” policy at his company Basecamp. They discuss his business philosophy, the surrender of institutions to “social-justice” activism, how politics has acquired a religious fervor, some of the cultural risks of remote work, keeping activists out of one’s company, social media use as analogous to smoking cigarettes, antitrust regulations for big tech, how social media might be improved, the tax-avoidance schemes of the richest Americans, the prospect of implementing a wealth tax, and other topics. Jason Fried is the co-founder and CEO of Basecamp, makers of Basecamp and HEY.com. He’s also the co-author of a number of unusual business books, including New York Times Bestseller REWORK, REMOTE, Getting Real, and his latest It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work which The Economist called “funny, well-written and iconoclastic and by far the best thing on management published this year.” Website: world.hey.com/jason Twitter: @jasonfried 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 Neil deGrasse Tyson about our place in the universe. They discuss our current understanding of extra-solar planets, the prospect that there is complex life elsewhere in the galaxy, the Fermi problem, the possibility that all advanced civilizations self destruct, how we can detect life on exoplanets, recent media interest in UFOs, whether a direct encounter with alien life would change our world, the flat-Earth conspiracy, the public understanding of science, the problem of political partisanship, racial inequality, and other topics. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of fifteen books—many of them international bestsellers—and numerous articles, both scholarly and for the general public. He is the host of StarTalk, a podcast, and two seasons of Cosmos, televised by Fox and National Geographic. He has received 21 honorary doctorates as well as NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal. He and his wife live in New York City.   Website: https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/ Twitter: @neiltyson  Essay: Reflections on the Color of My Skin by Neil deGrasse Tyson   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 Antonio García-Martínez about his recent firing at Apple. They discuss his experience in tech, his book “Chaos Monkeys,” the controversy at Apple, cancel culture, and other topics. Antonio García Martínez is a former early Facebooker, advisor at Twitter, and (very briefly) an employee at Apple before being the object of a petition for his dismissal. His memoir Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure was on The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, as well as NPR’s Best Books of 2016, and still somehow manages to be a subject of debate five years later. Website: https://www.thepullrequest.com/ Twitter: @antoniogm   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 Jesse Singal about a variety of controversial topics. They discuss fragmentation in the media, bad incentives in journalism, Jesse’s encounters with cancel culture, transgender activism, the case of J.K. Rowling, the capture of cultural institutions by the far Left, racism, class inequality, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, whether Jesse should try psychedelics, and other topics. Jesse Singal is the co-host of the podcast Blocked and Reported and the author of The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills. A contributing writer and former senior editor at New York Magazine, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and other outlets. He has a master’s in public affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Website: https://jessesingal.substack.com/ Twitter: @jessesingal 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 and David Whyte further explore his work in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. David Whyte is a poet and the author of 11 books of poetry along with four books of prose, including Still Possible, David Whyte: Essentials and The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationships. David holds a degree in Marine Zoology, honorary degrees from Neumann College and Royal Roads University, and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, Amazon, and Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures, and workshops. Website: davidwhyte.com  Twitter: @whytedw