Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

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: @EricRWeinstein. Articles mentioned in this podcast:A. Koestler. “The Nightmare That Is a Reality” The New York Times Magazine. January 9, 1944. S. Harris. “Islam and the Misuses of Ecstasy”

Sam Harris speaks with biologist David Krakauer about information, intelligence, the role of IQ, complex systems, technological advancement, and the future of humanity. They discuss the importance of culture and artifacts in relation to human intelligence and the rise of stupidity, the concept of information and its connection to genetics, brain science, and physics, the mathematical meaning of complexity, the value of cursive writing and early experiences in learning, normative claims surrounding changes in cognition and ethics, the relationship between complexity, ethics, and intellectual honesty, the search for life beyond Earth, and the smartest person in human history.

Essays mentioned in this podcast: Reflections on “Free Will”by Daniel C. Dennett The Marionette’s Lamentby Sam Harris

Sam Harris reads and discusses the second chapter of “The End of Faith.” 

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the head of Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the first occupant of its Frederick P. Rose Directorship. He is also a research associate of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. His research interests include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson is the recipient of nineteen honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest award given by NASA to a non-government citizen. He holds a degree in physics from Harvard and a PhD in astrophysics from Columbia. Tyson has served on several Presidential commissions and government advisory councils. He has written ten books, including The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist and Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, and Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. Recently, Tyson served as executive editor, host, and narrator for Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, the 21st century continuation of Carl Sagan’s landmark television series. The show began in March 2014 and ran thirteen episodes in Primetime on the FOX network, and appeared in 181 countries in 45 languages around the world on the National Geographic Channels. Cosmos won four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, two Critics Choice awards, as well as a dozen other industry recognitions.

Juliette Kayyem is one of the nation’s leading experts in homeland security. A former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, and the state of Massachusetts’ first homeland security advisor, Kayyem served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security where she handled crises from the H1N1 pandemic to the BP Oil Spill.  Presently a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she also is the founder of Kayyem Solutions, LLC, one of the nation’s only female owned security advising companies. Kayyem is a security analyst for CNN, a weekly show contributor on WGBH, Boston’s NPR station, and the host of the podcast Security Mom, also produced by WGBH.  In 2013, she was the Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns in the Boston Globe.  A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Kayyem lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children. She is the author of Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home.

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris reads and discusses the first chapter of The End of Faith.

Sam Harris speaks with philosopher David Chalmers about the nature of consciousness, the challenges of understanding it scientifically, and the prospect that we will one day build it into our machines. David Chalmers is Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University, and also holds a part-time position at the Australian National University. He is well-known for his work in the philosophy of mind, especially for his formulation of the “hard problem” of consciousness. His 1996 book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory was successful with both popular and academic audiences. Chalmers co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and has organized some of the most important conferences in the field. He also works on many other issues in philosophy and cognitive science, and has articles on the possibility of a “singularity” in artificial intelligence and on philosophical issues arising from the movie The Matrix. 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.

Anxiety is a monster that is crippling and paralyzed and keeps you in a loop of debilitating negative emotions even when one desperately wants out. What are the causes? What can one do to help themselves? What steps big or small do you suggest?What are your thoughts on immortality or at least living a very very long time as pursued by researchers like Aubrey de Grey? Do you think it's possible? Do you think it's desirable?I remember you mentioning getting flack from Maajid about not liking hip hop. I'm curious. What sort of music do you listen to? Stravinsky, Radiohead, Enya?Why aren't your books translated into Arabic?Can you please do a podcast with Richard Lang, disciple and close friend of the late Douglas Harding about The Headless Way, the westernized version of dzogchen?What are your preferred news sources?I heard you say once before that the left has one advantage over the right in that it has a self correcting mechanism. Well, now that the left seems to be going off the deep end, we need those mechanisms.Did you find that the initial onset of your fame altered your sense of self/ego at all even temporarily? If so, how? Do you credit your background in meditation for helping you keep level headed?On stoicism, you said you were disappointed in how you handled some recent battles. What are your strategies moving forward to evolve and prepare when you suit up for the next one?Sam addresses requests for his views on abortion.We're always hearing about how Iran was a relatively more liberal nation before the Islamic regimes took over. We hear about how the problem of radical Islam is relatively new in the world and that historically Islam was not as violent. If we grant that this is true, does this make religion more or less scary considering that apparently these violent interpretations can arise suddenly and possibly without historical context?Can you tell us anything about your upcoming book on artificial intelligence?What are your thoughts on the transgender debate?What is your position on male circumcision?What would you be working on if 9/11 hadn't happened and you hadn't written The End of Faith? How would your work be different?

Sam Harris talks to Omer Aziz about Islam, Islamism, free speech, and related topics.