logo
episode-header-image
May 2025
22m 30s

#417 — Philosophy for Life

SAM HARRIS
About this episode

Sam Harris speaks with Donald Robertson about Stoicism and the good life. They discuss the relationship between wisdom and virtue, ancient versions of psychotherapy, parallels between Stoicism and Buddhism, practical vs. analytical styles of philosophy, CBT's origins in Stoicism, the difficulty of self-criticism, techniques for reframing upsetting experiences, the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Socrates, the psychological pitfalls of using social media, 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.


Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That's why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life's most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

 

Up next
Today
#501 — The Performance of Empathy
Sam Harris speaks with Sherry Turkle about her new book, Artificial Intimacy. They discuss the early optimism of the internet, the attention economy, the loss of solitude and boredom, the decline of empathy, whether the performance of empathy can ever be enough, AI as therapist, ... Show More
23m 35s
Oct 30
#500 — The Playing Animal
Sam Harris speaks with Jimmy Carr about comedy, culture, and the state of the West. They discuss Carr's new book on the craft of joke writing, why comedy should be taught, the ethics of crowd work, AI as a new god, cancel culture, attention and meditation, psychedelics, political ... Show More
27m 35s
Oct 20
#499 — The Birth of AGI
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 ... Show More
20m 52s
Recommended Episodes
May 2020
E80. Sam Harris Says You Can’t Become Happy, You Can Only BE Happy
Sam Harris (author, philosopher, neuroscientist) has a fascinating conversation with Bridget about meditation, consciousness, mindfulness, and awareness. They discuss what brought Sam to meditation (drugs, initially), and the decade he spent traveling and diving into Eastern phil ... Show More
1h 45m
May 2023
#209 — A Good Life
Sam Harris speaks with Scott Barry Kaufman about human well-being. They discuss intelligence and creativity, wisdom and transcendence, the history of humanistic psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the connection between well-being and ethics, self-esteem, psychedelics and me ... Show More
45m 20s
Apr 2025
Sam Harris On: Equanimity in Turbulent Times; Compassion for Difficult People; And Dualistic vs Non-dualistic Mindfulness
tail spinning
1h 32m
Sep 2023
Sam Harris (Wealth, Health & Debate)
<p class="p1">Russell chats to Sam Harris, a renowned neuroscientist, philosopher, best-selling author, and the host of 'Making Sense' podcast, as well as the creator of 'Waking Up'. In this episode, they tackle everything from the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, to the dangers of ... Show More
1h 30m