In this episode, we examine a series of Sam’s conversations centered around religion, atheism, and the power of belief. 

First, we hear the stories of three guests who have fled their respective oppressive religious organizations. We begin with Sarah Haider, founder of the advocacy group Ex-Muslims of North America, who details how her encounters with militant atheists catalyzed her journey to secularism. Then our narrator, Megan Phelps-Roper, walks us through her story of abandoning the Westboro Baptist Church. Finally, Yasmine Mohammed presents her harrowing account of escaping fundamentalist Islamism and Sam’s role in inspiring her public advocacy work.

We then tackle the concept of belief more broadly, diving into Sam’s understanding of atheism and what sets it apart from the views of other atheist thinkers like Matt Dillahunty and Richard Dawkins. We also revisit an infamous conversation between Sam and Jordan Peterson, wherein they attempt to come to some universal definition of the word “truth.”

The episode concludes with two Q&A portions from life events in which Sam addresses some real concerns about purpose and meaning in the absence of religion.

About the Series

Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.

Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.

Sam Harris speaks with Stuart Russell and Gary Marcus about recent developments in artificial intelligence and the long-term risks of producing artificial general intelligence (AGI). They discuss the limitations of Deep Learning, the surprising power of narrow AI, ChatGPT, a possible misinformation apocalypse, the problem of instantiating human values, the business model of the Internet, the meta-verse, digital provenance, using AI to control AI, the control problem, emergent goals, locking down core values, programming uncertainty about human values into AGI, the prospects of slowing or stopping AI progress, and other topics.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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 Matt Ridley and Alina Chan about the origins of the COVID pandemic. They discuss the evidence of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, media and academic censorship of this topic, the history of collaboration between western scientists and Chinese labs, the risks of "gain-of-function" research, the evidence for the zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2, the initial complacency and denialism of the Chinese, the biosafety levels at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, molecular evidence of a lab leak, the practical constraints on synthesizing viruses, lack of international cooperation, conspiracy theories promulgated by the CCP, EcoHealth Alliance, different kinds of "gain-of-function" research, virus hunting, the history of lab leaks, risk and reward in the search for knowledge, Anthony Fauci, and other topics.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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, we examine the timeless question of “free will”: what constitutes it, what is meant by it, what ought to be meant by it, and, of course, whether we have it at all. We start with the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky who begins to deflate the widely held intuition and assumption of “libertarian free will” by drawing out a mechanistic and determined description of the universe.

We then hear from the philosopher who has long been Sam’s intellectual wrestling opponent on this subject, Daniel Dennett. Dennett and Sam spar about definitional and epistemological frameworks of what Dennett insists is “free will,” and what Sam contends could never be.

The author and physicist Sean Carroll then engages Sam with more attempts to find a philosophically defensible notion of free will by leaning on the unknowable nature of the universe revealed by quantum mechanics. We then listen in on Sam’s engagement with the mathematician and author Judea Pearl who focuses on matters of causation to tease out a freedom of will.

After a historical review of Princess Elizabeth’s famous exchanges with Rene Descartes, we hear from the biologist Jerry Coyne, who firmly agrees with Sam that a deterministic picture of reality leaves absolutely no room for anything like free will.

We then hear from the curiously entertaining mind of comedian and producer Ricky Gervais who was thinking about free will while taking a bath when he decided to phone Sam.

We conclude with Sam’s own response to concerns that an erasure of free will inevitably result in fatalism, loss of meaning, and passive defeat. Sam insists that the loss of free will actually pushes us in the opposite direction where we begin to see hatred and vengeance as incoherent and start to connect with a deeper and truer sense of genuine compassion.

About the Series

Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.

Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.

Sam Harris speaks with Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, and Renee DiResta about the release of “the Twitter files” and the loss of trust in the institutions of media and government. They discuss Bari and Michael’s experience of participating in the Twitter files release, the problem of misinformation, the relationship between Twitter and the federal government, Russian influence operations, the challenges of content moderation, Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, the need for transparency, platforms vs. publishers, Twitter’s resistance to the FBI, political bias at Twitter, J.K. Rowling, the inherent subjectivity of moderation decisions, the rise of competitive platforms, rumors vs. misinformation, how Twitter attempted to control the spread of Covid misinformation, the throttling of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the failure of institutions to communicate Covid information well, the risk of paternalism, abuses of power, and other topics.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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.

This episode centers around the specter of violence and surfaces some of Sam’s most controversial positions and difficult conversations.

We begin with author and former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, who delivers some potentially life-saving aspects of “tactical empathy,” which can also be applied to less extreme circumstances. Author and security expert Gavin de Becker then lays out his thesis from The Gift of Fear, which recasts this unfairly maligned emotion as an important attention-demanding, evolved signal.

We then spend time with Sam’s position on “profiling” and the moral and political complexities woven into it. This careful consideration leads to a conversation with author and firearms instructor Scotty Reitz, as they paint a stark picture of certain extremes of violence and consider what responsible gun ownership might look like.

Sam then answers questions directly on his often criticized and often misunderstood position on gun ownership before we turn to author and former Navy Seal Jocko Willink to apply pressure on the philosophical stance of pacifism. We conclude with the philosopher Tamler Sommers, who ponders the idea of “honor” in society and inspects how third-party delegation of violence might generate an illusive sense of justice.

About the Series

Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.

Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.

Sam Harris speaks with Martha C. Nussbaum about her philosophical work. They discuss the relevance of philosophy to personal and political problems, the influence of religion, the problem of dogmatism, the importance of Greek and Roman philosophy for modern thought, the Stoic view of emotions, anger and retribution, deterrence, moral luck, sexual harassment, the philosophical significance of Greek tragedy, grief, human and animal flourishing, the "capabilities approach" to valuing conscious life, the rightness or wrongness of moral hierarchies, "the fragility of goodness," and other topics.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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 Robert Waldinger about the Harvard Study of Adult Development. They discuss the limitations of relying on self-report to assess a person’s well-being; Daniel Kahneman’s remembering and experiencing selves; why it can be hard to figure out what makes us happy; the effects of alcohol, smoking, and exercise; the connection between work and fulfillment; the primacy of relationships; the diminishing importance of wealth; status vs feeling valued; the connection between good relationships and physical health; having kids and marital satisfaction; introversion vs extroversion; mortality and loss; collecting experiences vs things; the benefits of walking; taking relationships for granted; quantity vs quality time; the self and self states; the guru-disciple relationship; and the possibility of enlightenment.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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, we try to trace morality to its elusive foundations. Throughout the compilation we take a look at Sam’s “Moral Landscape” and his effort to defend an objective path towards moral evaluation.

We begin with the moral philosopher Peter Singer who outlines his famous “shallow pond” analogy and the framework of utilitarianism. We then hear from the moral psychologist Paul Bloom who makes the case against empathy and points out how it is more often a “bug” in our moral software than a “feature.” Later, William MacAskill describes the way a utilitarian philosophy informs his engagement with the Effective Altruism movement.

The moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt then puts pressure on Sam’s emphasis on rationality and objective pathways towards morality by injecting a healthy dose of psychological skepticism into the conversation.

After, we hear a fascinating exchange with the historian Dan Carlin where he and Sam tangle on the fraught issues of cultural relativism.

We end by exploring the intersection of technological innovation and moral progress with the entrepreneur Uma Valeti, whom Sam seeks out when he encounters his own collision with a personal moral failure.

About the Series

Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.

Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.

Sam Harris discusses Elon Musk's behavior on Twitter and the illusion of "free-speech absolutism."

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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.