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.

#451 — The One Resolution That Matters Most

Dec 31, 2025

As digital distraction increasingly fragments our attention, Sam explains why mindfulness is a practical skill for reclaiming clarity and presence. Begin a mindfulness practice using the Waking Up app, and make training your mind the foundation for everything else in the year ahead.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in...

#450 — More From Sam: Resolutions, Conspiracies, Demonology, and the Fate of the World

Dec 30, 2025

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss Sam's 2025 New Year's resolutions, the benefits of meditation, Sam’s conversation with Ross Douthat, AI risks, Tucker Carlson's midnight encounter with a demon, the fracturing on the right, antisemitism on...

#449 — Dogma, Tribe, and Truth

Dec 22, 2025

Sam Harris speaks with Ross Douthat about religion, modernity, and what can steady a culture that feels increasingly unmoored. They discuss the case for faith in an age of digital disembodiment, declining birthrates, and looming AI-driven upheaval. They also debate tribalism and dogmatism, whether secular societies can...

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil

Dec 8, 2025

Sam Harris speaks with David Edmonds about moral philosophy and effective altruism. They discuss Edmonds’s book Death in a Shallow Pond, Peter Singer’s famous drowning child thought experiment, arguments for and against thought experiments, “trolleyology,” consequentialism, the origins of the Effective Altruism...

#447 — The Unraveling of American Power

Dec 4, 2025

Sam Harris speaks with Peter Zeihan about Trump’s second term and its economic and geopolitical consequences. They discuss Zeihan’s failed 2024 election prediction, the unprecedented unraveling of American power, Trump’s tariff policies, the AI bubble, deglobalization and supply chain vulnerabilities,...