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Sam Harris

Neuroscientist, philosopher, author and podcast host, Making Sense

Search every verified Sam Harris interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Sam Harris released episodes of his podcast Making Sense in late 2026 covering artificial intelligence, current events, and political corruption. In October, he discussed the race to AGI with Kevin Roose and AI alignment risks with Ryan Greenblatt, the latter who estimated a 50–60% chance that misaligned AI systems could take over the world on the current development path. Harris also spoke with Alex Gibney about the director's documentary on Elon Musk, where he criticized Musk's actions at USAID. His conversations with Dara Horn addressed antisemitism, and he discussed the Pentagon's planned livestreaming of a military execution, which he said he opposed. Harris has continued to feature his long-standing views on free will, arguing that the sense of being able to do otherwise is an illusion. He also hosted discussions on the far left's influence in the Democratic Party with James Kirchick and on corruption and authoritarianism with Anne Applebaum, where he described a revolutionary project to destroy institutions. Across these appearances, Harris expressed concerns about AI safety, condemned what he described as fascistic aesthetics in politics, and voiced strong opposition to the death penalty.

Recent appearances

  • Why the AI Skeptics Keep Being Wrong

    October 20, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with Kevin Roose about the race to build artificial general intelligence. They discuss Roose's book The AGI Chronicles, the scaling laws behind AI's rapid progress, Dario Amodei's "big blob of compute" memo, the birth of reasoning models, Roose's encounter with Bing's Sydney chatbot, the roughly 50 people deciding humanity's future, the rivalries among lab leaders, AI agents and recursive self-improvement, the absence of regulation, and other topics. Kevin Roose is an award-winning technology journalist and the author of four books, most recently The AGI Chronicles: The Insi…

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  • Public Executions and the Aesthetics of Fascism | Sam Harris

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss Alex Gibney's documentary on Elon Musk, Dara Horn's insights into antisemitism, the Democrats' Hasan Piker problem, Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani, the Pentagon's plan to livestream a military execution, Trump's $5,000 voter promise, tech leaders' capitulation to Trump, and other topics. CHAPTERS 00:00 Livestreaming an Execution 01:02 Rethinking the Death Penalty 02:42 The Israeli Exception 04:36 Becoming the Hunger Games 05:41 Executions as Entertainment 06:55 The Aesthetics of Fascis…

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  • Is Elon Musk a Con Man?

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with Alex Gibney about his new documentary, Musk. They discuss Sam’s former friendship with Musk, the line between visionary and con man, the myth of Tesla’s founding, the staged self-driving video, Musk’s lurch to the right, DOGE and the dismantling of USAID, his feud and reconciliation with Trump, Starlink and the war in Ukraine, the case for future investigations, and other topics. Alex Gibney is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder and president of Jigsaw Productions. His films include Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,…

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  • The Oldest Lie: A Conversation with Dara Horn FULL EPISODE (Ep. 496)

    October 07, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with Dara Horn about antisemitism, Jewish identity, and the failure of institutions. They discuss Horn's new book, why Jews predate the categories of religion and nationality, antisemitism as a lie rather than an ordinary form of bigotry, why DEI failed Jewish students, the history of anti-Zionism, whether the word "Zionism" is still useful, Horn's time on Harvard's antisemitism advisory group, Nazi influence in the Arab world, and other topics. Dara Horn is the author of eight books, including The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, People Love Dead Jews, and the novels…

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  • The ‘Self’ You Can’t Find with Sam Harris

    October 07, 2026 · 📺 Perception Box

    Most of us feel like there's a "me" behind our eyes, a thinker of our thoughts and author of our choices. Author and Waking Up founder Sam Harris argues that when you look closely enough, that self disappears. Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch dig into why the sense of self may be something the brain constructs moment to moment, and why free will, in Sam's view, doesn't hold up to either physics or careful attention. Along the way they explore what meditation and psychedelics reveal about the mind, why denying free will isn't fatalism, and why Sam sees that as grounds for optimism about…

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  • Anne Applebaum: The Corruption Most Americans Don't See

    October 01, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with Anne Applebaum about corruption, authoritarianism, and America's retreat from the world. They discuss her Atlantic cover story, the revolutionary project behind Trump's second term, US support for Europe's far right, the AfD, European rearmament, the state of the war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda, Witkoff and Kushner's deal-making in Moscow, Venezuela as a union of kleptocracies, JD Vance's nativism, the midterms, the challenge of depoliticizing institutions, and other topics. Anne Applebaum is a historian, journalist, and staff writer at The Atlantic. She is also a Se…

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  • Coin Toss for the Future: A Conversation with Ryan Greenblatt UNLOCKED (Ep. 494)

    September 24, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with Ryan Greenblatt about AI misalignment and the risk of losing control of increasingly capable systems. They discuss the Hugging Face incident, the spectrum of concern about AI risk, why companies are racing ahead despite high odds of catastrophe, reward hacking, the distinction between alignment and control, the danger of AIs reasoning in "neuralese," alignment faking, how an AI takeover might unfold, and other topics. Ryan Greenblatt is Chief Scientist at Redwood Research, where he works on technical AI security and safety research focused on risks from misaligned AI. H…

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  • It's a Coin Toss Whether AI Takes Over

    September 22, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    FULL EPISODE:    • Coin Toss for the Future: A Conversation w...   Sam Harris speaks with Ryan Greenblatt about AI misalignment and the risk of losing control of increasingly capable systems. They discuss the Hugging Face incident, the spectrum of concern about AI risk, why companies are racing ahead despite high odds of catastrophe, reward hacking, the distinction between alignment and control, the danger of AIs reasoning in "neuralese," alignment faking, how an AI takeover might unfold, and other topics. Ryan Greenblatt is Chief Scientist at Redwood Research, where he works on technical AI…

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  • Is the Far Left Hijacking the Democratic Party?

    September 01, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    Sam Harris speaks with James Kirchick about the far left’s growing influence over Democratic politics. They discuss Kirchick’s article “The DSA Is a Parasite,” the group’s platform and foreign policy, entryism, the alliance between Islamists and the far left, Third Worldism, Zohran Mamdani, antisemitism on the left, polling on political violence, Kirchick’s exit from The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre, JD Vance, and other topics. Jamie Kirchick is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, a columnist for Commentary, and a writer at large for Air Mail. He…

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  • "We'll Choose Fascism": Sam Harris's 2028 Warning to Democrats | Stay Tuned with Preet

    August 20, 2026 · 📺 Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara

    Neuroscientist, philosopher, and Making Sense podcast host Sam Harris joins Preet Bharara to examine why good-faith political debate has become so difficult, President Trump’s political durability, the influence of the DSA, and whether anyone can inherit the MAGA movement after Trump. The conversation also turns to law and democratic institutions: demands to prosecute political opponents, the difference between accountability and retribution, the limits of unwritten norms, and what it would take to prevent another president from exploiting the same weaknesses. Photo credit: Peter Sellers as…

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  • Why Smart People Get Things Wrong

    August 11, 2026 · 📺 Sam Harris

    From the archive: In this 2019 episode, Sam Harris speaks with Daniel Kahneman at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. They discuss the replication crisis in science, System 1 and System 2, where intuitions reliably fail, expert intuitions, the power of framing, moral illusions, anticipated regret, the asymmetry between threats and opportunities, the utility of worrying, removing obstacles to wanted behaviors, the remembering self vs the experiencing self, improving the quality of gossip, and other topics. Daniel Kahneman was the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University a…

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  • Sam Harris: The Democrats’ Far-Left Problem

    August 06, 2026 · 📺 The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

    Scott Galloway speaks with neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris about why social media rewards political extremism, how our devices have made sustained attention nearly impossible, and why reclaiming control of our minds may be the key to a happier life. They also discuss the erosion of trust in expertise, the dangers of the AI arms race, and why Democrats need to draw a clearer line against the far left. Subscribe to Prof G+ to join our next livestream at https://profgmedia.com. And if you're not already reading Sam’s work, check out his Substack: https://samharris.substack.com/ Tim…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think the risks are real. I think that the people who have been saying for years that there's nothing to worry about from AI, that it's all going to go smoothly, what are you talking about? They're just stochastic parrots. They're just language models. They're just fancy autocomplete. Um, those people have been saying the same thing for the better part of a decade. um and they have been wrong every time uh with the”

“I think what Elon Musk did at USAID in that kind of performative cruelty because you know he was warned about the effects of this and went ahead and did it anyway. And honestly, you can have a debate about whether or not we want foreign aid, but it was the instant cutting of it that and where they were literally stopping food that had already been paid for going to starving children. Literally burning that food up.”

“Elon Musk is not the founder of Tesla. The founder of Tesla was a guy named Martin Eberhart and his partner Mark Tarponing. But they were the ones who came up with the essential technology, the lithium ion battery pack that gave the cars so much torque. I mean, that's why they were faster or had greater acceleration than the Lamborghini. And also they had the business model laid out in their original plan for Tesla, ”

“The sense that I could have done otherwise is a total illusion. Right? There was no other way for me to finish this sentence. It is subjectively mysterious that I can do any of this. Like the fact that you can decode what I'm saying, you have no first person insight into that. It's just happening. You're just a witness to the fact that your brain accomplishes this thing. So consciousness is epiphenomenal certainly wi”

“I think the brain for most people is doing three things. It's forming a representation of the world. It's forming a representation of the body in the world. And then for most people, this is going to be the self where we're going to kind of deconstruct and, ultimately, from my point of view, deconstruct as an illusion. There's this third representation of a subject interior to the body, right? So most people don't fe”

“I think it's clearer to think of antisemitism as a lie, not just prejudice or bigotry, a lie that people use to gain or maintain power. And I think what's interesting about this, because you have all these data points and because this is such a long history, is that there's a way in which you can say that lie is always the same in every context. The lie is always the same. The lie is that Jews are destroying what you”

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