Sam Harris
American neuroscientist and philosopher
52
APPEARANCES
33
PODCASTS
Sep 18, 2026
Sam HarrisGUEST
Well, I mean, to a significant degree, it's people moving in two opposite directions.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, like the people who were stuck with a religious worldview, stuck, I mean, literally in many cases traumatized by a fear of hell that had been inculcated into them by their religious parents, but were enamored enough of enlightenment values and secular rationality and science so as to have the the spell break to some significant degree, and they needed some language to help kind of midwife their delivery into the clear light of reason, right? And they also needed...
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, Richard is just... critiquing religion and counterposing it with all that's wonderful about science, right? And so for him, the spiritual attitude that is on offer once you leave religion behind and close the church doors behind you is awe at the beauty of nature and just amazement at everything we are learning and may yet learn about the way the world works and the way the mind works.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Now, to use Newton's image, I mean, it's like we are children on a seashore playing with shells and the vast ocean of ignorance and potential knowledge just awaits our inspection.
7 MINS LATER
Chris WilliamsonHOST
I think people are hoping that there is yet more juice to squeeze from your conjoined lemons in however way that happens.
Chris WilliamsonHOST
There's tension between the drive to do more, the acceptance of who we are, the wanting to show up in the world and to give it everything that we've got and the gratitude for the things that we already have.
Sam HarrisGUEST
And I think you want to, ultimately, I think you want to be biased on the being side of it.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, certainly if you've succeeded enough, right? Like if you have a, if you recognize that you've won the lottery on some level and you are in a position now where there are billions of people who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you, right? And there'll be a time in your life where you would give anything to trade places with who you are now, right? Like when you're in your last months of life and you're terminally ill or you've lost someone very close to you.
Sam HarrisGUEST
When you have this moment in the sun where things are basically going well, right? I think it's appropriate to have a module in your mind which continually pings you, which says, if you can't enjoy this, if this is gonna be wasted on you, you're never gonna be happy.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Yeah, except the thing that surprises me is that it should be more obvious than it is to more people that someone's an asshole.
Chris WilliamsonHOST
It wasn't far off that, I think, that the actual tweet was about saying that it was, I think, damaging science and doing a disservice to maybe Dawkins himself and some other stuff.
Sam HarrisGUEST
It's a explicitly macho religion, right? It's a no pussies religion, right? It's just a With Christianity, you have to pretend to be happy to be losing for the longest time, and you're basically just waiting for Jesus to come back and rectify this grave injustice.
Chris WilliamsonHOST
The answer is a return to something that's got a bit more Lindy nature to it.
Preet BhararaHOST
is there always that noise or does Donald Trump strategically, tactically, instinctively create that noise? Was there that much noise when Biden was president? I don't think so.
Sam HarrisGUEST
There have been kind of Trump-like reverberations that crossed the four years where he wasn't president.
Sam HarrisGUEST
But I mean, for Trump specifically, I mean, this is, I think, a kind of unpopular opinion of him, but this is the framing I have always had of him, and I think I still have it.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I think a lot of his success and his ascendancy and his invulnerability to scandal has less to do with him being some kind of political genius than— And more to do with the situation in which he has found himself, right? So I view him as a – the analogy that has worked for me is that he's kind of an evil version of the Chauncey Gardner character from the Jersey Kosinski book and the being there and the – the film by that name.
Sam HarrisGUEST
If people remember, Peter Sellers played this character who is just kind of alone in the house, and all he is is the gardener, and he gets a thrust into a situation where everything he says can be mistaken for political wisdom, but he's really an imbecile, right? And he never ceases to be an imbecile, but he's in a context in which everything he does begins to look profound and has a profound effect on the people around him.
23 MINS LATER
Sam HarrisGUEST
And it was like the first time that I think, you know, we had really been face to face with, you know, a parent's mortality.
16 MINS LATER
Casey HarrisGUEST
your family, be it your biological or your, you know, your chosen family or your people who you can, you know, maybe you can't count on them all the time, but you can always reach out and you can always feel like you can say something to them, even if they aren't going to say anything back to you.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Well, I mean, to, to a significant degree, it's people moving in two opposite directions.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, like, they're, they're the people who were stuck with a religious worldview, stuck, I mean, literally in, in many cases traumatized by a fear of hell that had been inculcated into them by their religious parents, but were enamored enough of enlightenment values and secular rationality and science so as to have the, this, the spell break to some significant degree, and they needed some language to, to help kind of midwife their delivery into a, i- into the clear light of, of, of reason, right? And they also needed...
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, Richard is just critiquing religion and counterposing it with all that's wonderful about science, right? And so for him, the, the spiritual attitude that is on offer when you, once you leave religion behind and, you know, you know, close the church doors behind you, is awe at the beauty of nature and just amazement at, you know, everything we are learning and may yet learn about the way the world works and the way the, the mind works.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Now, to, to use Newton's image, I mean, it's like we are children on a seashore playing with shells and the, the vast ocean of, of ignorance and potential knowledge, it just, you know, awaits our, our inspection.
Chris WilliamsonHOST
This tension between the drive to do more, the acceptance of who we are, the wanting to, to show up in the world and to, to give it everything that we've got and the gratitude for the things that we already have.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, certainly when, if you've succeeded enough, right? Like you, if you have a...
Sam HarrisGUEST
If you recognize that you've won the lottery on some level and you are in a position now where there are billions of people who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you, right? And you, you...
Sam HarrisGUEST
There, there'll be a time in your life where you would pa- give anything to trade places with who, who you are now, right? Like when you're, you know, when you're in your last months of life and you're, you're terminally ill or you're, you know, you've lost someone very close to you.
7 MINS LATER
Sam HarrisGUEST
Yeah, except the, the thing that surprises me is that it should be more obvious than it is to more people that someone's an asshole, right? It's like that, like it doesn't matter how fluent you are, you're, you're only just r- declaring your assholery in sh- in more concise form, right? Um, and so it, it's kind of a Trumpian moment.
Sam HarrisGUEST
He's obviously a, a selfish person, but nobody-- none of his fans care, right? He's like, he's not a compassionate person.
Sam HarrisGUEST
He's e- he can't even pretend to care about people really, right? He's-- But his, his shamelessness around his selfishness has become a kind of superpower for a certain audience because he's, he's conveying the message, "I will never ju- I, I will never judge you because I'm incapable of judging myself," right? "Like I'm not, I, I'm not holding myself to any kind of standard apart from the gratification of my own desires.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So, you know, I'm, I'm, in s- in some sense, I have a real integrity because I know I'm selfish." All those people who are pretending not to be selfish, who are pretending to be ethical and compassionate, to care about, you know, uh, uh, the sub-Saharan Africa and, uh, you know, education in developing countries.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, uh, someone like Bill Gates, right? You know, Bill Gates is somebody who can't get laid, and he's just gonna microchip you with the next vaccine, right? Like that, that's-- This is gonna be a great, uh, quote to export from this podcast.
Sam HarrisGUEST
With Islam, there's an expectation that they're gonna conquer the world, right? And there's an imperative to conquer the world, and for Ser- for serious Muslims.
Sam HarrisGUEST
You can take as long as you want, but this is all, we all know this is moving in one direction, and you need to be a spiritual warrior.
Sam HarrisGUEST
And if you b- if you take this really far, if you become a jihadist, right, you're, and especially doctrinaire, militant, you know, true believer, well, then you're a kind of spiritual James Bond.
Preet BhararaHOST
But, but is there always that noise or does Donald Trump strategically, tactically, instinctively create that noise? I mean, was there that much noise when Biden was president? I don't, I don't think so.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Well, there was, you know, there ha- there've been kinda Trump-like reverberations, uh, uh, you know, that, that crossed, you know, the, the four years where he wasn't president.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, uh, uh, we, we continue to unravel and, and there, there's a left-wing version of the, kinda the Trumpist noise machine.
Sam HarrisGUEST
But I mean, th- for Trump specifically, I mean, this is k- uh, I think a kind of unpopular opinion of him, but this is the, the framing I have a-always had of him, and I, I think I, I still have it.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I think a lot of his success and the, you know, his ascendancy and his invulnerability to scandal has less to do with him being some kind of political genius and more to do with the situation in which he has found himself, right? So I, I view him as a...
Sam HarrisGUEST
The, the, the analogy that, that has worked for me is that he's kind of an evil version of the Chauncey Gardiner character from the, the Jerzy Kosiński book and the, being there and the, and the, the film by that name.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So this, if people remember, Peter Sellers played this character who is just kind of alone in the house, and he's all he is, is the gardener and, and he, um Gets thrust into a situation where he can be-- everything he says can be mistaken for political wisdom, but he's really an imbecile, right? And he's ne-he never ceases to be an imbecile, but he's in a context in which everything he does begins to look profound and has a profound effect on the people around him.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I think it's, you know, it probably has something to do with more access to information, ultimately.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I just think that there is a an important asymmetry in the tug of war, which is now many centuries old, between Enlightenment rationality and secularism and a universal conception of human rights and democracy and everything else that's on the good side of that sort of progress that allows for open societies, and religious orthodoxy.
Sam HarrisGUEST
you know, Iron Age certainties about the unique veracity of a single revelation, right? So it used to be that if you were a Christian, you know, somewhere around the 14th century, the 15th century, you know, it was expected that you could be killed for thought crimes, but, you know, by the religious orthodoxy that governed everything, right? Now, we have fought a a very difficult battle against that kind of theocracy in the West.
12 MINS LATER
Preet BhararaHOST
But is there always that noise or does Donald Trump strategically, tactically, um, instinctively create that noise? I mean, was there that much noise when Biden was president? I don't, I don't think so.
Sam HarrisGUEST
There have been kind of Trump-like, uh, reverberations, uh, you know, that, that crossed, uh, you know, the, the four years where he wasn't president.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, we, we continue to unravel and, and there is, there is a left-wing version of, of, uh, of kind of the Trumpist noise machine.
Sam HarrisGUEST
But I mean, for, for Trump specifically, I mean, this is k- I think a kind of unpopular opinion of him, but this is the, the framing I have al-always had of him, and I, I think I, I still have it.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Um, I think a lot of his success and, and, you know, his ascendancy and his invulnerability to scandal has less to do with him being some kind of political genius and more to do with the situation in which he has found himself, right? So I view him as a...
Sam HarrisGUEST
The, the, the analogy that, that has worked for me is that he's kind of an evil version of the Chauncey Gardiner character from the, the Jerzy Kosiński book and the, and the, uh, being there and the, and the, the, the, um, the film by that name.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So this-- If, if people remember, Peter Sellers played this character who is just kind of alone in the house, and he's all he is, is the gardener.
25 MINS LATER
Unknown podcast
Ep.557 ~ The Issue With Postmodernism - Sam Harris ~ Jordan B Peterson
Aug 17 · 11m
Sam HarrisGUEST
And my point is that morality, and this perhaps something you, you're going to want to, to, um, disagree with, but in my view, morality ha- morality has to relate to the, the suffering and well-being of conscious creatures.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, not even limiting it to, to humans, but just whatever can possibly suffer or be made happy in this universe is some, is a, a possible theater of, of moral concern.
Sam HarrisGUEST
And we know that mind, that conscious minds must be arising in some way in conformity to the laws of nature.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, so whatever is possible for conscious minds is a statement about, at, at bottom, a, a final scientific un- understanding of what minds are and what consciousness is and how those things are integrated with the physics of things.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Um, and so there r- there have to be right answers to the question of how to navigate from the worst possible suffering for everyone to places on the moral landscape that are quite a bit better than that, where there's, there's beauty and creativity and joy of a sort that we can only dimly imagine.
6 MINS LATER
Unknown podcast
Ep.556 ~ Good and Evil ~ Jordan B Peterson
Aug 17 · 18m
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, I, I do think of these things as kind, as almost facets of a, a single jewel, right? And, and so the facets are different.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, it's talking about, you can talk about beauty and not talk about love in, in the same conversation.
Sam HarrisGUEST
That you can have a coherent discussion of, of, of beauty without reference to love and, and vice versa.
Sam HarrisGUEST
But when you're talking about the, the, the conscious states that, that maximize one's appreciation of all of these things and participation in all of these things, it's easy to, to, to intuit that there's a, there's a common structure to the whole picture.
10 MINS LATER
Unknown podcast
Ep.555 ~ Objective Morality and Human Value - Sam Harris ~ Jordan B Peterson
Aug 17 · 8m
Jordan PetersonHOST
Now, is that, is that a reasonable, is that a reasonable conclusion? Have I got that right?
Sam HarrisGUEST
I, you know, this came largely out of the collisions I was having with, uh, people after I wrote my first two books, uh, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, where I was noticing, you know, disproportionately on the left, uh, specifically, I mean, we've come full circle now to this moment, you know, in the news cycle.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Um, but, um, you know, mostly in response to my criticism of, of Islamic extremism and, uh, you know, the, the kind of the urgency with which I was, I was saying that the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad are, you know, are sincerely believed by millions of people, and these beliefs have real consequences in the world, and they're not good ones, right? And, and we should, we should talk about that honestly.
Sam HarrisGUEST
What I was getting mostly from the left was, um, you know, what, what struck me as pure masochistic delusion, but it was on its own side a very sophisticated philosophy of, you know, postmodernist truth claims about the, the relativity of everything, uh, which, which, you know, in the minds of its adherents left us with no solid ground to stand on ever when making claims about right and wrong and good and evil.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Uh, so, you know, I, I mean, the, the point where it, it became, and this is something that I, this is actually a scene I, I, I wrote verbatim in my third book, The Moral Landscape, which is where I, I laid out, you know, my, my argument on this, on this topic.
Unknown podcast
Ep.551 ~ Do People Possess Evil Ideas or Do Evil Ideas Possess People- Sam Harris ~ Jordan B Peterson
Aug 17 · 8m
Sam HarrisGUEST
Well, I, I would say that i- it's not exclusively religious, but insofar as it is religious, it gets even more leverage in a, i- in, in that context and to, to worse ends.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So for instance, you know, w- what is worse about jihadism than, you know, ordinary forms of terrorism, in my view, i- it is the religious top spin it a- it has based on the, the, its motivating ideas.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So the fact that it is, is in principle otherworldly, the fact that it is, you know, just anchored to, to prophecy and belief in the supernatural, all of that potentiates it, uh, in the, you know, further in the wrong direction.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So you like, you know, the troubles in Ireland would've been made worse had the Irish Catholics also been suicide bombers, uh, expecting to go straight to heaven because there was a, a passage in the New Testament which said, "You know, if you die while killing, uh, pagans or Jews or any other non-Christian, uh, you'll, you know, you'll find yourself at the right hand of Christ in the next moment." Right? So like that, like it, it's better that there's not a passage like that in, in the New Testament, and it's better that, that, that, you know, quasi-religious, uh, political, um, source of, of terrorism in the UK was not, uh, potentiated by, you know, a clear connection to religious belief and religious expectation.
Sam HarrisGUEST
It, it, it depends on the specific instance we're talking about, but I, I think what I'm saying is, um, is even more pessimistic than that, is that i- given the requisite beliefs, it's possible to create immense harm consciously, create immense harm without even having bad intentions toward anyone.
Scott GallowayHOST
Talk a little bit about the attention economy, what you see as are the threats to our attention, and w-w-what, what meditation, you know, where meditation and, and an attention reset kind of, um, where the Venn overlap is there.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Well, so, uh, the first thing to acknowledge is that all we really have is our attention.
Sam HarrisGUEST
You know, the, the quality of our life really is a story of what we're paying attention to and what we can notice, right? The quality of our attention and, and where it is aimed.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I mean, most people think that the time is the one non-renewable resource and, you know, that, that's true.
9 MINS LATER
Unknown podcast
Ep.413 ~ The Social Media Problem - Sam Harris ~ Jordan B Peterson
Aug 2 · 9m
Sam HarrisGUEST
Yeah, it's a question I continue to ask myself because, you know, you only have one life or, you know, I would say you only have one life you can be sure of.
Sam HarrisGUEST
And so why not live it in the happiest manner possible? But I do find that there are certain moments.
Sam HarrisGUEST
First of all, my interests are wider than can be encompassed just by things like meditation and meditation.
Sam HarrisGUEST
narrowly focusing on questions about how to live the most meaningful possible life right it's not it's not all just about maximizing mental pleasure or um even one's you know ethical wisdom moment to moment they're just things that interest me that i want to talk about that really don't belong over waking up but they do belong on my podcast so talking about you know physics say right that's just interesting and i like to do that um So there's that.
Sam HarrisGUEST
As you say, I deleted my Twitter account, which is an important part of the answer to your first question, which is what has gotten better for me in the last 12 months.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I really am embarrassed to say what a life hack that turned out to be to get off Twitter.
5 MINS LATER
Jordan PetersonHOST
And part of the reason Twitter is so pathological, perhaps, and is such a snake pit of polarization is because it does encourage that kind of impulsive and immediate response to things that are perhaps of sufficient seriousness so that they should only be taken seriously.
Unknown podcast
Ep.291 ~ We Have A Serious Problem With AI ~ Jordan B Peterson
Jul 23 · 5m
Unknown podcast
Essentials: Using Meditation to Focus, View Consciousness & Expand Your Mind | Dr. Sam Harris
Jul 23 · 40m
Andrew HubermanHOST
What is this thing that we call a self? As far as I know, we have not localized the region in the brain that can entirely account for our awareness of self.
Sam HarrisGUEST
The problem is we use the term self in so many different ways, right? And there's one sense...
Sam HarrisGUEST
And you'll hear it from me that this self is an illusion, right? And that there's a psychological freedom that can be experienced on the other side of discovering it to be an illusion.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Some people would insist that it's not so much an illusion, but it's a construct and it's not what it seems.
20 MINS LATER
Andrew HubermanHOST
to break it down, meditation into some basic component parts, What are the component parts? And where I'm really going with this is why would those component parts eventually allow for the realization that there is no distinction between actor and observer and so on?
Sam HarrisGUEST
The problem is we, we use the term self in so many different ways, right? And, and there's w- there's one sense of that term which, um, is the target of meditation, and you'll hear it from me, that this self is an illusion, right? And, and that there's a, there's a psychological freedom that can be experienced on the other side of discovering it to be an illusion.
Sam HarrisGUEST
Some people would, would insist that it's not so much an, an illusion, but it's a, it's a construct, and it's not w-what it seems.
Sam HarrisGUEST
The thing that doesn't exist, uh, certainly doesn't exist as it seems, and I would w- I would want to argue that it actually is just a proper illusion, is this, the sense that there is a subject interior to experience, in addition to experience.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So most people feel like they're having an experience of the world, and they're having their... an experience of their bodies in the world.
13 MINS LATER
Andrew HubermanHOST
Is just the recognition that there's an, a dialogue ongoing internally, is that itself valuable?
Unknown podcast
Ep.281 ~ Watch This Before Going to College ~ Jordan B Peterson
Jul 22 · 9m
Sam HarrisGUEST
Yeah, but the antidote to fails or failures of science, say, you know, or scientific fraud... is not something other than science.
Sam HarrisGUEST
And so it is with journalism or any academic discipline or anything that purports to be truth-seeking, we have standards.
Sam HarrisGUEST
What's dangerous about the current information landscape where we have just this contrarian universe where anything that is outside the institutions is considered to have some kind of primacy, right? Where everyone is kind of a citizen journalist, a citizen scientist, where you just kind of flip the mics on and talk for four hours, and that's good enough.
Sam HarrisGUEST
What that's selecting for are the people who have have no standards to even violate, right? I mean, these people are incapable of hypocrisy.
Jordan PetersonHOST
It's because I think the best way to deal with what she's doing is not to discuss her.
Unknown podcast
Ep.206 ~ Are You Willing To Take the Chance That Morality Is Subjective ~ Jordan B Peterson
Jul 15 · 18m
Jordan PetersonHOST
And there's a hierarchy of value in consequence of that, that is obliquely associated with the world of fact, because it has to operate in the world of fact, but that isn't fundamentally derived from like data
Sam HarrisGUEST
I'm never claiming when I say that there are objective truths to all of these questions that those objective truths will be delivered by some guy holding a clipboard wearing a white lab coat.
Sam HarrisGUEST
But there are things we just know to be true, and it would take a lot of explaining to get to the bottom of how we know them to be true.
Sam HarrisGUEST
We know that life in... you know, the best and most refined and most ethically, you know, positive sum developed world context, right? You know, you and me and our most conscientious friends at the nicest resort after having done a great day's work, we're enjoying a great meal and talking creatively and positively about how to improve the world, we know that's a better game than trying to find some child soldiers to torture the neighbors in some malarial hellhole in sub-Saharan Africa so that we can extract the...
Sam HarrisGUEST
was and i think for me too like a part of my personality is like i'm a people pleaser i'm also like always looking for like you know these like Big brother, father figure.
Sam HarrisGUEST
I'm like always drawn towards these people, right? And also like I am an ambitious person.
Sam HarrisGUEST
And when that's reflected in somebody else and they're driving you and pushing you, it just like kind of unlocked something in me.
Sam HarrisGUEST
So yeah, there were times where I was like definitely trying to like impressed this person and i don't think that was necessarily always a bad thing um because it activated this work ethic in me that i've always had but it kind of like turned supercharged it a little bit um you know Yeah, we had a complicated relationship.
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