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.

#346 — The Best Kept Secret In History?

Dec 22, 2023

Sam Harris speaks with Brian Muraresku about ancient mystery religions and the possible psychedelic roots of Christianity. They discuss the Mysteries of Eleusis, the “pagan continuity hypothesis,” the cult of Dionysius, the Dead Sea scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels, Christianity as a cult of human sacrifice, the...

#345 — Resilience

Dec 18, 2023

Sam Harris speaks with Amanda Knox about her experience of having been falsely convicted and imprisoned for murder in Italy.

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Learning how to train your mind is the single...

#344 — The War in Gaza

Dec 12, 2023

Sam Harris comments on the recent testimony of university presidents before Congress, along with Elon Musk's reinstating of Alex Jones on X.

He then introduces a recent episode of the Call Me Back podcast about the war in Gaza, hosted by Dan Senor. Sam really enjoyed listening to this conversation and we’re...

#343 — What Is "Islamophobia"?

Dec 6, 2023

Sam Harris discusses the social and political consequences of a weaponized term. A transcript of this podcast is available on Sam’s blog.

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#342 — Animal Minds & Moral Truths

Nov 27, 2023

Sam Harris speaks with Peter Singer about important problems in ethics. They discuss his career as a philosopher, the moral status of non-human animals, the ethics of moral hierarchies, speciesism, the scale of animal suffering, conscientious omnivores, animal experimentation, the tragic case of Sam Bankman-Fried,...