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.

#484 — Artificial Intimacy

Jul 8, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom about our relationships with AI and the future of human connection. They discuss the surprising pace of AI progress, AI companions as a remedy for loneliness, the importance of mattering to other people, digitally resurrecting the dead, whether AI can be conscious, the moral failings of...

#483 — The Knots We Tie Ourselves Into

Jul 1, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with Alain de Botton about the psychology of unhappiness, the secular world's discomfort with ecstasy and ritual, psychedelics as a tool for self-discovery, Freud's legacy, AI as the ultimate mirror, the case against meritocracy, the cancel culture purity trap, the psychological meaning of death, and...

#482 — More From Sam: The Iran Deal, College in the AI Age, Mamdani’s DSA, and More

Jun 25, 2026

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss topics from Making Sense Community, including one-world government, the value of a degree as AI reshapes careers, and factory farming ethics, along with Mamdani’s DSA-aligned candidates, Trump’s...

#481 — Sam Harris Receives the 2026 Richard Dawkins Award

Jun 17, 2026

Richard Dawkins presents Sam Harris with the 2026 Richard Dawkins Award at a live Center for Inquiry event. After the tribute, the two friends discuss consciousness and epiphenomenalism, AI and the Turing test, the scientific basis of morality, the failures of democracy and Trump’s corruption, the role of philosophy,...

#480 — The Economics of Everything

Jun 12, 2026

Sam Harris speaks with economist and Substack writer Noah Smith about the U.S. national debt, wealth inequality, and the economic consequences of AI. They discuss the mechanics of debt and inflation, the case for fiscal austerity, why the U.S. squandered low interest rates, modern monetary theory, how AI may...