Making Sense with Sam Harris

Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events. The Making Sense podcast was selected by Apple as one of iTunes Best of 2015.

Harris is the author of the best-selling books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up—along with Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

Harris’s work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.

Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.

Sam Harris's blog and podcast, and much more, can be found at samharris.org.

#475 — The Hard Problem of Consciousness

May 12, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Michael Pollan about consciousness, the mind, and the self. They discuss Pollan’s new book, the relationship between consciousness and intelligence, whether consciousness is a product of evolution, the role of psychedelics in consciousness research, AI and the question of machine consciousness,...

#474 — More From Sam: Hasan Piker, Islamism, Making Sense Community, and More

May 7, 2026

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss the launch of Making Sense Community, Sam’s Ben Shapiro conversation, the New York Times’s embrace of Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani’s approach to Islamism, the misuse of the word “genocide,” AI-driven job...

#473 — Money, Power, and Moral Failure

Apr 29, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Lloyd Blankfein about finance, politics, and the state of American society. They discuss Blankfein’s memoir, Goldman Sachs and its role as a market maker, the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the AI investment bubble, wealth inequality and the rise of trillionaires, the crisis of antisemitism on the...

#472 — Strange Days on the Right

Apr 24, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Ben Shapiro about their pre-election debate and the fractures on the right. They discuss Trump's second term surprises, familial corruption, tariff policy, the ideological world of Tucker Carlson, the spread of conspiracism on the right, antisemitism as the ur-conspiracy theory, JD...

#471 — The End of History, Revisited

Apr 16, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Francis Fukuyama about liberal democracy, American politics, and global order. They discuss the misunderstood thesis of "The End of History," how conservatism has mutated into ethno-nationalism, the self-defeating extremes of both identity politics and neoliberalism, the damage of Trump's...