Making Sense with Sam Harris

Conversations on neuroscience, philosophy, mindfulness and ethics AI summary

Sam Harris Visit website › Science · EN · 519 episodes · latest 2026-11-11

Rank 1891

0 upvotes, 0 downvotes

Embed a widget with this podcast’s standing on your website

What it is about

Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and five-time New York Times best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the mind, society, current events, moral philosophy, religion, and rationality—with an overarching focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live. Sam is also the creator of the Waking Up app. Combining Sam's decades of mindfulness practice, profound wisdom from varied philosophical and contemplative traditions, and a commitment to a secular, scientific worldview, Waking Up is a resource for anyone interested in living a more examined, fulfilling life—and a new operating system for the mind. Waking Up offers free subscriptions to anyone who can't afford one, and donates a minimum of 10% of profits to the most effective charities around the world. To learn more, please go to WakingUp.com. Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
All rights reserved

Listen

Available at these services — the RSS feed works in any podcast app.

Apple Podcasts

Latest episodes

#502 — The Rebuke

2026-11-11 · 27 min

Sam Harris speaks with Jonah Goldberg about the aftermath of the midterm elections. They discuss Trump's 60 Minutes interview, Trump's claims of election fraud, JD Vance's autopsy of the Republican defeat, corruption…
#501 — The Performance of Empathy

2026-11-03 · 24 min

Sam Harris speaks with Sherry Turkle about her new book, Artificial Intimacy. They discuss the early optimism of the internet, the attention economy, the loss of solitude and boredom, the decline of empathy, whether the…
#500 — The Playing Animal

2026-10-30 · 28 min

Sam Harris speaks with Jimmy Carr about comedy, culture, and the state of the West. They discuss Carr's new book on the craft of joke writing, why comedy should be taught, the ethics of crowd work, AI as a new god,…
#499 — The Birth of AGI

2026-10-20 · 21 min

Sam Harris speaks with Kevin Roose about the race to build artificial general intelligence. They discuss Roose's book The AGI Chronicles, the scaling laws behind AI's rapid progress, Dario Amodei's "big blob of compute"…
#498 — More From Sam: Bond Villains, Useful Idiots, Firing Squads, and More

2026-10-14 · 23 min

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss Alex Gibney's documentary on Elon Musk, Dara Horn's insights into antisemitism, the Democrats' Hasan Piker…
#497 — The Confidence Man

2026-10-09 · 22 min

Sam Harris speaks with Alex Gibney about his new documentary, Musk. They discuss Sam's former friendship with Musk, the line between visionary and con man, the myth of Tesla's founding, the staged self-driving video,…
#496 — The Oldest Lie

2026-10-07 · 1 hr 40 min

Sam Harris speaks with Dara Horn about antisemitism, Jewish identity, and the failure of institutions. They discuss Horn's new book, why Jews predate the categories of religion and nationality, antisemitism as a lie…
#495 — Foreign Policy for Sale

2026-10-01 · 18 min

Sam Harris speaks with Anne Applebaum about corruption, authoritarianism, and America's retreat from the world. They discuss her Atlantic cover story, the revolutionary project behind Trump's second term, US support for…
#494 — A Coin Toss for the Future

2026-09-24 · 1 hr 33 min

Sam Harris speaks with Ryan Greenblatt about AI misalignment and the risk of losing control of increasingly capable systems. They discuss the Hugging Face incident, the spectrum of concern about AI risk, why companies…
#493 — Two Reasons to Meditate

2026-09-17 · 13 min

Meditation can help us live better. It can also help us understand what is true about our own minds. These motivations might seem fundamentally different, but Sam explains why they're two aspects of the same project. If…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Owner: Waking Up with Sam Harris
Oldest episode in feed: 09/2013 · over 13 years
Typical length: 46 min
Format: Episodic Newest first, episodes stand alone

Making Sense with Sam Harris in the rankings

The best Science podcasts The best English-language podcasts All rankings ›

For podcasters

Is this podcast yours? Verify it — afterwards you can correct details, get the widget for your website, and we let you know when your podcast is nominated or wins.

Without an account you can use an email address on your show’s own domain — we create the account along the way. The other methods need a login.