#450 — More From Sam: Resolutions, Conspiracies, Demonology, and the Fate of the World

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss Sam's 2025 New Year's resolutions, the benefits of meditation, Sam's conversation with Ross Douthat, AI risks, Tucker Carlson's midnight encounter with a demon, the fracturing on the right, antisemitism on the right and the left, the Bondi Beach massacre, the Epstein files, accusations made by Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein, and the collapse of shared reality, which Sam argues is the central problem driving many of these crises. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe http://samharris.org/subscribe.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Sam Harris?

  Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Okay, we're back with another episode of More From Sam, where we get more from you, Sam.

• 0:41Sam Harris?

  Yes, good luck.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Thank you. How are you?

• 0:44Sam Harris?

  I'm good. How are you doing?

• 0:45Speaker 01

  I'm good. Good to see you. Before we get into things, I just want to quickly remind everyone that you will be giving talks in a number of cities in 2026: Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, Portland, Vancouver, Palm Beach, Toronto, Washington DC, and New York City. Last time we warned Portland to start buying tickets, or we were going to cancel, and that seemed to work. So, good news, the show is still happening. If you want to see Sam live, this is the time to do it, and it's a really great talk. Republicans and Democrats alike will be thrilled.

• 1:15Sam Harris?

  Both hate it.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  And annoyed, just like this podcast. Okay, on to our first topic. Last year, you made a New Year's resolution where you essentially planned to live like you were dying. I want to know how that went for you, and if you're making any adjustments to that plan for 2026, or is that just...

• 1:31Sam Harris?

  I don't remember that.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  The plan for the rest of your life?

• 1:33Sam Harris?

  No, no, I think I rephrased it. This, "Live as though it were my last year." Yeah. I mean, it was a great frame to put over the year. The year didn't quite become what I expected, because seven days into it, the half the city burned down, and I had to flee my house, which didn't burn happily, but we still haven't been back. So, you know, the year got jiggered around by real estate concerns way more than I was anticipating, and I wouldn't expect to spend the last year of my life on that.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Did that help you actually sharpen up your goal a little bit more?

• 2:04Sam Harris?

  It played a little havoc with it. I mean, in terms of actually the content of what I was paying attention to was more... More terrestrial and practical than I would have hoped for. But it was, I mean, I would give myself maybe a B on this aspiration. I mean, I think I did have my priorities pretty straight. It's always, the filter for me with respect to the podcast is,

• 2:33Sam Harris?

  I mean, there would be less, if I could really do this, I think there would be less politics. Or I mean, the level, the cut would be higher. I mean, it would really be sort of emergency politics more than just, okay, here's another thing in the news that I can't help but respond to.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Well, you're gonna hate this episode then.

• 2:49Sam Harris?

  Yeah, it's gonna be, this is probably not gonna be a moment of me walking my talk. But no, it was good. I would do the same. I think I'll do the same year after year because it's really, you know, obviously, one doesn't know how many one has left. And yeah, I mean, no regrets that that was my resolution.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  All right, good. I think we're all addicted to social media and our phones at this point. And our attention has become so fragmented that it's almost impossible to fully be anywhere anymore. Is there a quick pitch for the waking up app you can throw in here?

• 3:21Sam Harris?

  Well, I mean, you know, we often demonize the smartphone as the locus of all of our fragmentation and collective derangement. I think that's true, but obviously, there are different uses of a smartphone. And this is certainly one that I can stand behind as being just categorically different from the other stuff that's driving us crazy. I view most, truly, most of the audio I consume on a phone, which is a lot, as some version of, you know, very productive and unifying of my attention. I mean, you know, I listen to good books and good conversations. And, you know, obviously, you know, listening to guided meditations and then meditation instruction is, I think, kind of the ultimate example of a good use of attention on this device,

• 4:05Sam Harris?

  which is just not at all analogous to having your attention, you know, shattered on the regular by social media engagement and kind of the dopaminergic checking in to the response to the response to the response. So, yeah, I think waking up is, I mean, I love what we've created over there. And I think it's, it's a great use of the device, you know?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Can you give us some examples of what types of results one could expect once they develop this skill that could, I think honestly, take somebody about a week to really begin to see something, but you know, what kind of results can one expect?

• 4:39Sam Harris?

  Yeah, I love these questions. These are, this is exactly the way I come at it. Hope the irony was detectable there. I mean, so there are kind of two sides to this topic, right? There's the conventional mainstream pitch for mindfulness that, you know, here, here's a list of benefits you can expect from the practice. And most of what is claimed there, I think, is true. I mean, so some of it is, you know, poorly researched, or at least the research is kind of thin and, you know, some of it might wash out. But the thing that is obviously true is that virtually everyone, until they learn to practice mindfulness in some form, is spending their life perpetually distracted, and they're so distracted, they're not even aware of that, right? They're thinking every

• 5:21Sam Harris?

  moment of their lives, their moment to moment experience of being a self in the world is being filtered through this discursive, conceptually framed conversation they're having with themselves. And again, the conversation is, is so incessant and so loud that it achieves this kind of white noise status, where so people don't, aren't even aware that they're distracted. I mean, half the people hearing me say this, who have never tried to meditate, will be thinking, what the hell is he talking about, right? And but it's that, it's that voice in the mind, that what the hell is he talking about that feels like you? That's the endless conversation that is defining your experience moment to moment. And it's the, the medium on which all of your dissatisfaction and

• 6:05Sam Harris?

  frustration and regret and annoyance and, you know, everything that makes you an asshole in the world, it is the medium that transmits that and makes it actionable emotionally and behaviorally, moment to moment. It's like, it's the capture by thought unwittingly, right? The impulse that you can't see creep up from behind, that just becomes you, that becomes your, you know, the next thing you say, the next thing you reach for, the next thing you aspire to become. I mean, it's just, again, we're, we're living in a dreamscape and virtually nobody Already notices. So when you try to practice meditation for the first time, really any form of meditation, but you know mindfulness in particular, initially you're given this very basic exercise of you just

• 6:46Sam Harris?

  try to pay attention to the breath, you know, try to pay attention to sounds, you know, moment by moment. And every time you notice you're lost in thought, come back to the feeling of breathing or the the sounds in your environment, or the sense of your body resting in space, or just some sensory experience that you can use to try to build some concentration on. And it is, you know, it's if you persist in it long enough to notice how hard that is, and how vulnerable your attention is in every present moment to the next thought arising unrecognized and just seeming to become you. It is a kind of revelation, I mean, albeit a negative one. I mean, you just, what you, what you recognize in yourself is this pervasive incapacity to pay attention to anything for more than a few

• 7:30Sam Harris?

  moments at a time without being distracted. And it's very hard, but whatever you think about meditation from that moment forward, maybe you think it's just too much of a hassle, you know, you're too restless, it's too hard, you don't have a talent for it, you know, you're going to move on to other things, and you kind of bounce off the project. Even if you fall into that condition, is I think it should be very hard to, to argue to yourself that this is somehow psychologically optimal to not be able to pay attention to something for more than a few moments at a time, and to be helplessly buffeted by the winds of your own distraction.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I had a good thought actually about that. I wanted to run by you. There's this idea of sort of like a dealer dealing cards, like thoughts. And imagine sitting at the card table, blackjack table, just every time, just waiting for the cards. And just, no, don't want to play that card. No, just you can wait for a blackjack every time. If you know how to wait for the cards, you don't have to play the card that's dealt. You can say, I don't want that one, don't want that one. And everyone at the table is looking at you like, this guy's cheating. And it's kind of like cheating, but if you have that skill, it's kind of cool.

• 8:31Sam Harris?

  Oh, yeah. The cards are thoughts, right? Thoughts taken seriously. So, you know, the the voice of your mind says, I can't believe how you fuck that up. Right? And so, okay, so how much, so what does that, what does that convey, right? Like how much shame or regret, or what do you do with that? You don't have to do anything with it.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  You tell the dealer to give you another card?

• 8:52Sam Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, there's this image in Tibetan Buddhism of, you know, ultimately thoughts are like thieves entering an empty house, right? There's nothing for them to steal, right? So that like, just imagine what that's like. Imagine, just imagine the, the scene of, you know, thieves come, you know, storming into a house that has nothing in it, right? I mean, there's no implication of their presence there, right? That there's nothing for them to do. Thoughts recognized are just these mysterious mental objects, right? I mean, they really don't, you know, it is just a bit of language or a bit of imagery. And it is genuinely mysterious that, you know, this next thought can so fully commandeer your physiology and your, your whole sense of being in the world.

• 9:37Sam Harris?

  I mean, you're, the next thought taken seriously could define the next decade of your life. If you can't see some reason not to take it seriously. So meditation on some level is a way of relaxing the hold that thoughts automatically have on us.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, as we move into 2026, I hope people will develop a practice or, or give this a look. Check out Waking Up. And if not Waking Up, there are plenty of other apps where you can learn to meditate because it really is a basic skill that you should, you should just, if you don't go super deep, that's fine. But you should have a basic understanding and just explore that for yourself. And it's life changing. So if anyone's focused on nutrition and physical fitness and sleep, you're missing this aspect. If you care about those three and not, you're not caring about your mind, you're missing this. All right, on to our next topic. I really liked your podcast with Ross Douthat, that recent one. He's, he's very likable and very smart. I think it was the first time I liked an argument for why God,

• 10:36Speaker 01

  a perfect God would put in a, a bad idea like slavery in the Bible. Where he basically had said that he knew it was bad, but wanted to allow room for Christians to evolve and to sort of put their fingerprints on it over time. Now, he says-

• 10:49Sam Harris?

  That's a good argument.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  No, I, I, he said, you know, if that's not good for you, no, I, I, I wasn't persuaded by it, but I actually liked it. I thought, oh, that's a, that's a well-made argument that he's explaining that- I'd wanted to make room for Christians to evolve into.

• 11:03Sam Harris?

  Well, it's well made in the sense that it's totally unfalsifiable. It could absorb anything, any possible contents of the Bible, you know, even mathematical errors, right? I mean, you know, I think pi is calculated somewhere in the Bible as three, you know, full stop. I think I have that right. I mean, I think it's said that the, you know, the circumference of a circle is with a diameter one is three or something like that. But, okay, so God can't do math. Well, he's waiting for us to get better at math. I mean, that's he's leaving room for our own genius to explore that topic. It's just idiotic. I mean, I guess maybe I'm in an uncharitable mood around this, but I mean, as at a certain point, we have to run out of our patience with these dodges.

• 11:46Sam Harris?

  I just don't know how you spend your life circling that specific attractor again and again, year after year. I mean, it's just so obviously wrong and foolish. I mean, we'd have no patience for it. If this wasn't grandfathered in by this tradition, and again, you just look at the crazy, you know, it's Scientology. I mean, you look, you watch Alex Gibney's documentary on Scientology and look at that whole project and how embarrassing it was. And look at those exit interviews, right? And it's on some level more sophisticated than what we're talking about when you talk about, you know, any, any defense of Christianity.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you guys also talked about AI. And for some reason, I find myself much less scared now than I was earlier this year, simply because I believe the problem is going to be so big that it will get addressed quickly. Where are you on that now? How are you feeling? I mean, I know at some point earlier, we were both thinking, how is everybody not talking about this every second of the day? You still there?

• 12:41Sam Harris?

  Well, I continue to be impressed about how hard it is to maintain one's concern, even when one hasn't found a rational argument that should give you comfort, right? I mean, it is a sort of unique threat. I mean, this was the, at least the starting point of the talk I gave on it now, nearly 10 years ago, Ted Talk in 2016, I think. It's just, there's something entertaining about it. It's fun to think about the downside. I mean, it's all, there's something kind of. Sexy and and interesting about it that is it's not like a coming plague or you know, an asteroid impact or something that you like that was just that's just scary and depressing.

• 13:23Sam Harris?

  Right. So even if you think the risk is is undiminished, I mean, you can't figure out how to to be more comfortable with the probabilities or the possible negative outcomes. It's just there's something very elusive about me. Part of it is that the upside is also very compelling. Right. I mean, unlike the threat of nuclear war or anything else that is any other technological self imposed risk. I guess synthetic biology is slightly different. It's a little bit more like AI because there is obviously some real upside to our breakthroughs in in biology. But I mean, it's just there's something so, you know, in success, it looks like it could be amazing, you know, leaving aside total unemployment and this the social

• 14:04Sam Harris?

  challenge of trying to grapple with that. But yeah, I don't, I don't, you know, I think it's frankly terrifying when you look at the arms race condition we're in and the people who are the the the moral quality or lack thereof of the people who are making the decisions for us. I mean, it's like you can count on two hands, the number of people totally unregulated by a kleptocratic government at this point to speak of the United States.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Don't you believe we have to somewhat be unregulated at this point in order to win this arms race?

• 14:35Sam Harris?

  Well, I just think that if we had a morally sane and competent government, I think we would be forcing some sort of global approach to this global problem. Right. I mean, with that, everything would be bent toward that. I'm not talking about stopping development of AI. I don't think that's in the cards under any regime. But clearly, we need, we need to get out of this arms race condition. I mean, we're just merely in an arms race. I mean, that's it. Again, I don't, I don't consider myself very close to the the behind the scene details here. So I just, I don't know how scary it actually is. But you know, from what people say in public, it should be alarming that the people who are doing this work and people who are closest to it, when asked,

• 15:20Sam Harris?

  You know what probability they give to our destroying ourselves with this technology? They, I think to a man, they all say something terrifying. I mean, they're all like, oh, maybe 20%, you know? I mean, it's just not, it's like you're not hearing people like Sam Altman say, oh, no, no, no, no. We've got this totally in hand and we're being, you know, really safe and scrupulous. And yet people just have misunderstood this technology. There's no way, there's no self improving thing on the horizon that could conceivably get away from us. No, no, no, like this has just been way overblown. I would put the risk as one in a million. Virtually, maybe Yan La Kun is still somebody who talks that way, but virtually nobody in a position to make decisions says anything like that.

• 16:02Sam Harris?

  So just imagine if all the people developing nuclear technology at the time were saying, okay, we're probably, we're running a 20% chance of destroying everything. And yet we can't stop, you know, we're doing this as fast as possible. And now you're going to witness a multi trillion dollar build out that is going to basically subsume every other economic concern for us and environmental concern. I mean, where did, where did climate change go? You know, you got, you got all these people building these, the most resource intensive technology anyone ever dreamed of. And, you know, even some of the, the, the real climate change focused people like Elon in the past are, you know, there's none of that, right? It's just, you know, we're going to use all the water and all the electricity and, and let's go.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Well, what's the alternative? Weren't we given a 10% chance for just total destruction with nuclear war with creating the bomb?

• 16:51Sam Harris?

  I mean, there was a, a very small chance that the actual, you know, the Manhattan Project principals thought that we might, I mean, they did, they did some final calculations and put it, I think, at a truly small chance. Like, you know, like, you know, one in 10,000 or something. It was not 10%. But they were still placing bets on whether we would ignite the atmosphere and destroy everything.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  And that wasn't 10%? I thought that was 10%.

• 17:13Sam Harris?

  No, no, I mean, they didn't think it was 10% at the time. But imagine if they had, I mean, imagine if they had been willing to pull the trigger at Alamagordo on the, on the Trinity test, thinking there was a 10% chance that they were going to ignite the atmosphere and kill all life on. Earth, that would have been irresponsible. That would have been pretty shocking if they had done that. The fact that they thought that any of them thought it was within the realm of possibility is still a little alarming. And that's always been held out as a moment where scientists showed their capacity to whatever the real probabilities were. You can hold that aside. Within their own minds, they showed their capacity to roll the dice with

• 17:56Sam Harris?

  the future of the species in a way that should have kind of shocked everyone. But here we're in a completely different game, right? I mean, again, whatever the actual probabilities are aside, there's no way to know that. You have the people who are doing this work, funding this work, making the decisions on a daily basis, the closest to the engineering understanding that should govern one's sense of the probabilities here. They're telling us, yeah, this is, we're sort of in coin toss land, you know, or at least dice roll land. You know, a single die may come up, you know, six and we cancel the future, right? That's insane. And yet somehow we're not even in a position to have an emotional response to it.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Okay, but what's the alternative? Don't you want Sam Altman or the US to get whatever that is first?

• 18:46Sam Harris?

  No, I think we do need to navigate this, this growing, you know, superpower contest with China. We need whatever, you know, economic levers and, and military levers we can get in hand. But, you know, there, there should be some possible version of a carrot, which is we figure out how to solve truly global problems jointly, right? I mean, it's, we need an American president who could have conceivably unified the world's democracies on this and other points, right? Like all of our, all of our European allies and Australia and Canada could be on the same page. Vis a vis Russia and the war in Ukraine, vis a vis China and the AI arms race.

• 19:32Sam Harris?

  We need leverage, right? We need to be able to hit the stop button somehow. We need to, we need a system of alliances where we can actually credibly. Threaten China with a plunge back into poverty when we take back all of our supply chain. You know, and we can't just be America, right? We has to be, you know, every other democracy that cares about the fate of civilization. We just don't, we, we're not in a political environment where we can collaborate globally in, in those kinds of ways. And the reason why we're not is, it's not exclusively Trump, but it's, you know, it's Trump to an extraordinary degree. We're not in a position to absorb this kind of shock to our system.

• 20:13Sam Harris?

  You know, it's like you're gonna have Tucker Carlson talking about the rise of the machines. Is that really the, the information diet that half the country? You gotta have Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson chopping it up for four hours and making sense of this. We're not ready for the political and economic pivot that will be required in success. Right? And the, in perfect success, with, again, without any downside risk. I mean, if all of the catastrophic concerns are pure fiction, the alignment problem was never a problem. And the malicious use of this powerful technology is never significant, right? You don't have cyber terrorism, it's AI, you know, weaponized, you know, China doesn't turn out the lights on us, et cetera.

• 20:55Sam Harris?

  Right? None of that happens, right? It's all just the good use of this technology, just curing cancer all day long, you know? You know, curing cancer, playing chess, making things, you got AI, you know, Hollywood, Netflix gets to make movies that cost $14 to make, but they're the perfect, you know, wide release, summer confections, right? That everyone wants to see because they've been algorithmically tested on a billion brains. And, uh, you know, the next Tom Cruise looks 32 for the rest of his life. And it's all, you know, it's perfect. And yet, where's the economy around all of that? Who edited it? Who shot it? Who, you know, who catered it? None of that happened. It was made for $14 and, you know, on a laptop.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  You don't think government intervenes quickly and says, okay, wait, we gotta reset?

• 21:41Sam Harris?

  I mean, it would be amazing if we had the foresight to make the changes politically and economically that we would have.

• 21:50Sam Harris?

  To make to spread the wealth around, that would be amazing. Right. But I just see nothing in our history or in our in the present that makes it seem like we're capable of doing that. Right. But you what you would need, you would need people to be able to agree about the questions of fundamental value. Right. Like, what is good for people? What kind of lives do we want to live? Right. We can't even agree about the ethics of universal basic income. Like, the moment you you raise, I mean, there's, I think there's some question as to whether UBI is the right remedy for a situation like this. And there's certainly debatable points. I think the research on on UBI, the actual practical and psychological and social effects of UBI are that research is somewhat ambiguous still.

• 22:36Sam Harris?

  Although I would point out, it's being conducted in a context where these changes haven't been forced on, you know, culture across the board. Right. But we can't agree about it. So, you know, you, the moment you mentioned UBI, half the people will say, you know, this is obviously what we're going to need, some version of this, you know, and it's has no, should have no moral stigma attached to it. And then the other half will say, no, this is a catastrophe because people need to work. The people derive their meaning from work, and they should derive their meaning from work. And I can't imagine any other system of norms or expectations where you wouldn't get your meaning from work. And they're, you know, good Christian anchors to a lot of that thinking. If we can't even have that conversation and agree about what we should do, again,

• 23:21Sam Harris?

  under conditions of perfect success, where it's analogous to the creator of the universe just handing us the ultimate labor-saving device right here. Just become as wealthy as you want to be. Here's the hardware and here's the software that cancels the need for human drudgery until the end of the world and and will produce every scientific insight of which which nature admits is possible. Right. Here, here's kind of the, here is an intelligence explosion in your hands. You know, go have at it. In our current condition, we seem totally incapable of absorbing that. You know, we, I mean, that that would be the kind of the final irony. Like, give us the best thing that could ever be invented and we will turn it into the worst

• 24:05Sam Harris?

  thing that has ever been invented, right? It's like, you know, the Chinese would nuke us if they knew we had it now, kind of thing. That's how politically combustible we are as a species. Like, if we knew that China had it, right? If China had the AI that was, could cancel all of our efforts because it's perfect, right? And it's perfectly, again, perfectly aligned to their use, right? Like, it's not going to get away from them, but they can decide to just enjoy a winner-take-all spoils situation. They've got their first and they've proven it. What would we do? Given the level of antagonism in our world, given how zero-sum we are, what would

• 24:48Sam Harris?

  we do? Would we just bomb them? I mean, I think that's, I think, I would put the chances at 50/50, right? I mean, like, we're so far from even having a conversation about how to have a global civilization that works, because, I mean, and this, again, this comes back to our own domestic politics and how it is so much worse than the alternatives. I mean, say what you want about Biden and what could have been true under, you know, Kamala Harris presidency. Lots of awful things I would, I could also whinge about, but the one thing we wouldn't have is this plunge into America first, know-nothing-ism, this retreat from the world, the sense that even our allies are

• 25:33Sam Harris?

  contemptible, right? I mean, we don't, we don't even like our allies, you know, and we sort of like our enemies. If we can get our enemies to pay up, we kind of like them more than our allies because they have our ethics, you know? It's like, we don't want to hold ourselves to any standard of decency globally. So we actually are more comfortable doing deals with other countries that don't hold them to themselves any standard of decency, right? Like, yes, of course, we can do a deal with the UAE or Qatar, you know, that's just, it's just bakshish, right? I mean, like, so that change, the stepping Back from alliances and imagining that we can go it alone on some level and the

• 26:15Sam Harris?

  fact that half of our society is celebrating that and is just trying to figure out, you know, whether they can suffer the Jews in their midst as they become more and more selfish and more and more oblivious to what's happening in the rest of the world. I mean, that is far worse than the alternative, right? I mean, again, Kamala Harris was not a good candidate. The wokeness is as terrible as everyone on the right has said it is. I'm not, I would never minimize any of that. But we would have continued being a country that is looking to solve global problems in a sane way under a President Harris. There's no question about that.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Well, we know you'll have job security because you're going to have to help us think through all this continually on the podcast and then

• 26:59Sam Harris?

  Maybe.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  On the other side, you're going to have to help us figure out what to do with all this time with the meditation app. So let's shift gears now to Tucker and his demons.

• 27:11Sam Harris?

  You're determined to keep me in a good mood.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I just thought, I think this is kind of funny. I saw him tell this story. I know he's told it before about him being clawed by demons while asleep in bed with his wife and four dogs. And again, this was accepted by

• 27:25Sam Harris?

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