Robin Blumner

So we have audience questions, and thank you to everyone who has submitted questions.

So we'll start with Peter Walsh, who says, Richard, you said that you're trying to write a novel.

Can you tell us more about that and share with us your favorite fiction?

And Sam, you and your mother were both English majors, and you once wanted to be a novelist.

What are your favorite novels?

Thanks.

Thank you.

So Nathan Floyd asks, the two of you were lucky enough to call Christopher Hitchens your friend.

How often do you ponder how much the world misses his influence and how does your memory of him influence you today?

Armin Kalantari asks, real conversations with committed believers, logic often seems to hit a wall.

Given your work on belief and the limits of reason, what actually works in moving someone's mind if anything does?

What are the highest leverage ways to shift deeply held beliefs?

Nick McAlley asks,

Sam took MDMA at 18, and it sent him off into a life of contemplation and meditation.

I've always wondered, why did Sam conclude that that experience was worth changing his life from?

Why didn't he just dismiss the experience as a result of the drug's effects on the brain, and therefore not at all significant?

Fascinating.

Thank you.

Okay, this is the last question from Andrew Gregory.

In the demon-haunted world, Sagan warned that a society unable to distinguish science from pseudoscience would become vulnerable to manipulation.