The Best of Making Sense with Sam Harris

Latest Episodes:

#104 — The Lessons of Death Aug 01, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Frank Ostaseski about death and dying—and about how the awareness of death can improve our lives in each moment.

Frank Ostaseski is a Buddhist teacher, international lecturer, and a leading voice in end-of-life care. In 1987, he co-founded the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America. In 2004, he created the Metta Institute to provide innovative educational programs and professional trainings that foster compassionate, mindfulness-based care. Mr. Ostaseski’s groundbreaking work has been widely featured in the media, including the Bill Moyers television series On Our Own Terms, the PBS series With Eyes Open, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in numerous print publications. AARP magazine named him one of America’s 50 most innovative people. In 2001, he was honored by the Dalai Lama for his many years of compassionate service to the dying and their families. He is the author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.

More info:

mettainstitute.org

Fiveinvitations.com

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

#14 — The Virtues of Cold Blood Jul 25, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with psychologist Paul Bloom about the limitations of empathy as a guide to moral reasoning, why empathy is a bad metric for measuring one’s character, cognitive biases, and other topics.

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with a special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of six books, including The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning.

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

#40 — Complexity and Stupidity Jul 18, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with biologist David Krakauer about information, intelligence, the role of IQ, complex systems, technological advancement, the future of humanity, and other topics.

David Krakauer is President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. His research explores the evolution of intelligence on earth. This includes studying the evolution of genetic, neural, linguistic, social and cultural mechanisms supporting memory and information processing, and exploring their generalities. He served as the founding Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the Co-Director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation, and was Professor of mathematical genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2012 Dr. Krakauer was included in the Wired Magazine Smart List as one of 50 people “who will change the world.”

For information about the Santa Fe Institute: www.santafe.edu

The article discussed in this podcast: The Empty Brain

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

#90 — Living With Violence Jul 11, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Gavin de Becker about the primacy of human intuition in the prediction and prevention of violence, the value of crime statistics, self-defense, stalkers and assassinations, guns, and other topics.

Gavin de Becker is a three-time presidential appointee whose pioneering work has changed the way the U.S. government evaluates threats to its highest officials. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on the prediction and management of violence. His firm, Gavin de Becker and Associates, advises many of the world’s most prominent media figures, corporations, and law enforcement agencies on predicting violence, and it also serves regular citizens who are victims of domestic abuse and stalking. Gavin is the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Gift of Fear.

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

#125 — What is Christianity? Jul 04, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Bart Ehrman about his experience of being a born-again Christian, his academic training in New Testament scholarship, his loss of faith, the most convincing argument in defense of Christianity, the status of miracles, the composition of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, the nature of heaven and hell, the book of Revelation, the End Times, self-contradictions in the Bible, the concept of a messiah, whether Jesus actually existed, Christianity as a cult of human sacrifice, the conversion of Constantine, and other topics.

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

#151 — Will We Destroy the Future? Jun 27, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Nick Bostrom about the problem of existential risk. They discuss public goods, moral illusions, the asymmetry between happiness and suffering, utilitarianism, “the vulnerable world hypothesis,” the history of nuclear deterrence, the possible need for “turnkey totalitarianism,” whether we’re living in a computer simulation, the Doomsday Argument, the implications of extraterrestrial life, and other topics.

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.

#34 — The Light of the Mind Jun 20, 2022

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with philosopher David Chalmers about the nature of consciousness, the challenges of understanding it scientifically, and the prospect that we will one day build it into our machines.

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Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.