Sam Harris
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Who is Susan Harris and what is her significance?
guys my guest today is um it's hard to even describe what you what you what you've blossomed into uh he's got an app called waking up he's got a podcast the sam harris podcast i believe he's got a sub stack is that just sam harris yeah the podcast is making sense making sense yeah my fault um oh yeah it is okay I pay for something. I'm paying for something. I think I'm paying for the podcast and books. How do you describe yourself at this point? Yeah, I'm rarely in a situation when I have to. You're in it. Hit me. I mean, I am essentially a philosopher of mind. Technically, my PhD is in neuroscience, but I got it really as an expression of my philosophical interest. I almost did a PhD in philosophy, but just did a lateral move to neuroscience because I wanted to know more about the brain.
So most of my writing is philosophy of mind and moral philosophy, but I get dragged into politics so much that I'm
How did Sam Harris's childhood shape his philosophy?
The phrase public intellectual is sort of embarrassing to apply to oneself, but it's the way I'm functioning. I'm just bringing science and philosophy into whatever I can when we're talking about public policy. Do you find that you just bring science into it? Meaning you just end up inevitably talking about neuroscience within this stuff? Yeah, I mean, not just neuroscience, but I just think our understanding of ourselves scientifically is and should put pressure on what we think is real, obviously, and what we think human life is for and could be for and how good might it be and what sort of public policies make sense to implement.
What led Sam to drop out of Stanford for writing?
What should we get our ethics? Should we get it from books that people think were dictated by the creator of the universe 2,000 years ago or 1,400 years ago, depending? Or should we be having a 21st century conversation about the foundations of human flourishing? And so every time I open my mouth on any of these topics, I'm trying to bring in kind of a secular rationality into pretty fraught topics. Yeah. But before we even get into all that serious stuff, can you explain to people who your mother is? Because this is, I'm getting ready to blow your head apart. He's gonna take a sip of water, and then he's gonna tell you who his mom is. So my mom is Susan Harris, and she created a bunch of shows, but the one that was most seen and impactful was Golden Girls.
But she created Soap and a bunch of, I don't know, 10 shows. Benson? Benson was a spinoff of Soap. Did she fire Jerry Seinfeld?
What insights does Sam share about MDMA and personal transformation?
Jerry Seinfeld was a, didn't he had a bit part on Benson? He had a part on Benson, I think he didn't make it. Yeah, no, I don't think he, well, I don't know if that was just like a walk-on part or if he was trying to be a cast member. I think he was trying to be in the cast. Everybody was trying to be in the cast. Okay, well, I don't know the details on that. But she discovered Billy Crystal. Soap launched Billy Crystal, which was great. Yes. Jessica, the homosexuals go way back in history. Who? Alexander the Great was gay. Plato was gay. Plato? Mickey Mouse's dog was gay? He was, well, I don't wanna say he was impressionist at that point, but kind of. And what was it like, was she a single mom? That's what I'm, what was, how did she start?
Not in a way that sounds like it would give a high probability of success. So my dad left when I was two and a half, and I still had a relationship with him, but he moved to New York when I was three and a half and so i you know we were here and like living in an apartment yeah i live in an apartment in the valley and my mother had no safety net and i think my dad paid child support like once you know so i think there's like one 500 check or something that that discharged his responsibilities there and she i mean as the story goes she was watching television one day i don't know what she was doing for work or looking if she was looking for work at that point but I mean, very soon after he left, she was watching television and just thought, I could write one of those scripts.
And she wrote a first script and sold a first script, I think, for $2,000 or something.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Susan Harris and what is her significance?
0:00–1:06
2
How did Sam Harris's childhood shape his philosophy?
1:06–1:49
3
What led Sam to drop out of Stanford for writing?
1:49–2:49
4
What insights does Sam share about MDMA and personal transformation?
2:49–5:31
5
How does Sam Harris define the balance between meditation and activism?
5:31–6:27
6
What are the implications of consuming bad news on mental health?
6:27–9:00
7
How does Sam Harris critique pacifism in today's political climate?
9:00–11:40
8
What are Sam's views on Trumpism and leftist hypocrisy?
11:40–1:58:40