#488 — Ego, Ecstasy, and Equanimity

Sam Harris speaks with Neal Brennan about the experiences that shaped his life and work. They discuss Sam's mother's television career, growing up with an absent father, his struggles with perfectionism, his first experience with MDMA, dropping out of Stanford, meditation retreats, spiritual charisma and claims of psychic powers, the illusion of self, the limits of pacifism, deleting Twitter, Trump and the politics of shamelessness, hypocrisy and vice signaling, the future of American democracy, and other topics. 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:24Speaker 01

  Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Today, I'm sharing a conversation I had a few months ago, back in March, I think, with the comedian Neil Brennan, who's really fantastic. He's got a podcast. You may have seen him on Netflix. He has several specials there that are all worth watching, just a genuinely hilarious guy. But I was on his podcast a few months ago and had a conversation that is pretty different from the kinds I have here on my own podcast. So, many people thought that the Making Sense audience would like to hear this conversation.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  We go into my childhood, my mother's career in television, my father's absence, my early struggles with perfectionism. I mean, there's lots of psychodynamic stuff that I never talk about on my own podcast. And Neil just pulled this out of me, for some reason, in a way that no one else ever has. So, we thought you might want to hear it. As I said, this is a few months old, so I think some of the references might seem anachronistic. But I think the conversation holds up well, and I think you will enjoy it. So, I now give you me and Neil Brennan.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Guys, my guest today is, it's hard to even describe what you've blossomed into. He's got an app called Waking Up. He's got a podcast. He's got a Substack. And books. How do you describe yourself at this point?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm rarely in a situation when I have to.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  You're in it. Hit me.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I mean, I am essentially a philosopher of mind. I mean, technically, my PhD is in neuroscience, but I got it really with, 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, you know, most of my writing is philosophy of mind and moral philosophy, but I get dragged into politics so much that I'm, you know, the phrase "public intellectual" is sort of embarrassing to apply to oneself, but it's like, it is, it's the way I'm functioning, right? I'm just bringing science into, science and philosophy into whatever I can when we're talking about-

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Do you find that you just bring science into it? Or is it, meaning you just end up inevitably talking about neuroscience within this stuff?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, not just neuroscience, but I just think we're, our understanding of ourselves scientifically is, and should, put pressure on what we think is real, obviously, and what, what we think human life is for and could be for, and how good might it be? And what, you know, what sort of public policies make sense to implement? And, you know, what is, 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, it's, I'm trying to bring in kind of a secular rationality into pretty fraught topics.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. But before we even get into all that serious stuff, can you explain to people who your mother is? Because this is, this, I'm getting ready to blow your head apart. He's going to take a sip of water, and then he's going to tell you who his mom is.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  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. So, but she created Soap and a bunch of, you know, like, like, I don't know-

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Benson?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Benson was a spinoff of Soap.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Did she fire Jerry Seinfeld?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Jerry Seinfeld was a, didn't he had a bit part-

• 4:11Speaker 02

  He had a part on Benson, and I think he didn't make it.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I don't think he, well, I don't know if that was just like a walk-on part, or if that was, he was trying to be a cast-

• 4:19Speaker 02

  I think he wanted, I think he was trying to be in the cast. Everybody was trying to be in the cast.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I have not, I don't know the details on that. But she discovered Billy Crystal. Soap launched Billy Crystal, which was great.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  The homosexuals go way back in history. Who? Alexander the Great was gay. Plato was gay.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Plato?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Mickey Mouse's dog was-

• 4:47Speaker 02

  He was, well, I don't want to say he was impressionist at that point, but kind of.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  And what was it like? Was she a single mom? That's what I'm-

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  What was, how did, how did she start?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  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, you know, he moved to New York when I was three and a half, and so, you know, we were here.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  And like, living in an apartment?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I lived 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 was like, one $500 check or something 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. I think it was for-

• 5:56Speaker 02

  That's four months of child support.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  If you're keeping track.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  I think it was for a show, which I've never seen, called Then Came Bronson. It's about a guy who rode a motorcycle from town to town.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Perfect. This is the 1970s?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  A sitcom called Then Came Bronson.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I don't think, I don't know, I don't think it was a comedy. Maybe it was a comedy, I don't know. But she, she wrote for like, Love American Style, and then she started writing for some Norman Lear stuff, and-

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Did she, did she, it was, she just wrote it and then sold it, and then did she think like, "Oh, I can now do this"? Or was it just sort of-

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, she got a foothold. I mean, then she, she just started going, and so she was, she was never on staff anywhere, but she was submitting scripts. I don't even know if they had staffs back in the day there, but, I mean, she wrote some of the biggest episodes of television.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  She wrote like, the biggest, yeah, she wrote like, the Maude episode?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  The Maude abortion episode, which I think was in a country that had like, 150 million people, I think 60 million people got in front of the television sets and watched it that night.

• 6:59Speaker 05

  We finally have the right to decide what we can do with our own bodies. All right, then will you please get yours into the kitchen?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  So, it was like a Super Bowl event.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  But in English?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, yes. And with B. Arthur.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  In the role of that bunny.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Quarterback, yeah. Then she started creating her own shows with Paul Witt and Tony Thomas. So, it was Witt Thomas Harris, and they created Soap and Benson and a few other shows.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  And Witt Thomas was still going in the 90s. Or was, was, was she involved still?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  There were Witt Thomas shows that were, my mom wasn't involved in, so they produced other stuff. She just, she was only involved in stuff she wrote. And then she retired before they did, so there was, I think Witt Thomas continued for some years after.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  And what was it like? So, what were you, were you kind of, was she working a lot? Once that all started? How old were you?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Again, I was like, you know, three or something when she really had to start to work, you know, so, or even two and a half. But I was only, I mean, so I had lots of babysitters. I mean, that was like, that was the thing. I mean, the story I love, which I don't remember, I just remember in the retelling of it, but apparently, she once asked me, when her career was starting to take off, she could, she saw some, you know, daylight as to how successful this could be. At this point, we were living in a little rented house in the valley, but I was going to a private school where I had, so some of my friends were not like, rich, rich, but I mean, they had pools in their backyards, and they had a kind of different quality of life. She apparently came to me and said, "So, I have a choice to make.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  I could work a lot harder, and if I do, we may one day be able to get a pool like your friend, Tom Brown, but you're going to spend a lot more time with your babysitter." So, I had this babysitter, I don't know who it was at that point, but she named her and said, "And you should kind of, you know, I'll be home late." And so, it's really a choice for the two of us. It's, you know, we'll have a different life, you know, one way or the other. And apparently, I thought for about 10 seconds, and I said, "Get the pool, mom." So, so she got the pool. Yeah, it took, took a while, but she, I mean, we went from zero to being just wealthy. I mean, I think that started when I was maybe 12 or 13, something like that.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Was there a big difference, like, in your day-to-day life?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there was not, I mean, at that age, it's not such a big deal, but, or at least, you know, I don't remember it being, apart from just the house we were living in, I don't remember it being so transformative. But she, you know, she was a single mom who wanted to travel, like, so, actually, the big thing was that she took me on a bunch of trips, just the two of us. She was very brave, frankly. I mean, it was just, you know, a woman in her, I guess, late 30s with a, or mid 30s with a, you know, seven-year-old, eight-year-old, taking him to Africa and China when it opened up, and Europe, and I mean, she was just, you know, traveling alone, and, I mean, and she had not traveled a ton, you know, as a kid or a young adult herself, because they didn't have a lot of money, and it was, you know, a different time.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  So, she had just never traveled, and so she took, she slept me all over the world, you know, but by the time I was 14 or so, 15, I had gone many places, just, you know, just the two of us, so.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Do you think she was like, typical of, I mean, because Maude was kind of, it was, a lot of these shows at that point were like, went, like, the tip of the spear of women's lib, right? And was she, she's kind of, I hate, the word iconic is silly, but, but she seems like emblematic of that. And does she seem like she was living a life that a lot of women wanted to lead, or-

• 10:33Speaker 01

  She's very empowered, you know, because at a certain point, she became a, kind of a powerful person in the industry, right? So, it's like, she was just objectively successful and in demand.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  I got her, I mean, I'm like, hearing her credits, I'm like, she's top three, maybe the best female ever, top three ever, in terms of sitcom writers?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Because as somebody pointed out, my Jimmy Carr pointed out, she created Golden Girls. She also created Sex and the City, because it's highly derivative.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Well, the other thing, the real feat of writing that I think very few people have matched is for Soap, she wrote one, she wrote it entirely by herself for the first, I think, two and a half years, so she was banging out one episode a week. She did like, 75 episodes straight, you know, over, over, you know, the better part of three seasons, something like that.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  I did two seasons with another guy, and I'm still mad about it.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, she, and she had, so she never had a, on Golden Girls, she got a staff after whatever, like, the first 10 episodes or something like that, and then she stepped away.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, but-

• 11:36Speaker 01

  So, she was really just prolific in a way that is not-

• 11:39Speaker 02

  And was not a writer?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Prior to that?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I mean, she had, she was a reader. She was an English major in college, and she, so she loved, you know, story and fiction, you know, she was mostly a reader of fiction, so she wasn't starting from zero in that sense, but no, but not a, not a writer.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  And how does the, growing up, how often would you see your dad?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Maybe twice a year, or something like that. It was just like, like, a Christmas, like, a Christmas vacation for maybe two weeks, and summer for three weeks, something like that.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  What do you, what do you make of it all, looking back?

• 12:16Speaker 00

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