#397 — A New Year's Message from Sam

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense podcast.
0:23.6	This is Sam Harris.
0:25.9	Well, another year has elapsed, and 2025 is upon us.
0:30.6	If you're over a certain age, every year now appears absurdly futuristic.
0:36.8	How young do you have to be for 2025 to not look like the Chiron at the start of a science
0:41.8	fiction movie?
0:43.6	I don't know when that started for me.
0:45.7	Somewhere around 2014, maybe.
0:48.8	Where are the robots?
0:51.1	As I look back over the year and look ahead to what may be coming,
0:55.4	it's hard to escape the sense that we are witnessing more than the usual degree of change and chaos.
1:01.7	Liberal democracies are under threat globally.
1:04.8	The conflict between Israel and her neighbors continues.
1:08.4	And there's the looming prospect of a proper war with Iran. There was the fall of the
1:13.8	Assad regime in Syria and the uncertainty about what comes next. The war in Ukraine continues to
1:21.1	rage. And there is a simmering hostility between the U.S. and China. Unlike most periods in memory, if someone came
1:30.7	from the future and said, don't you realize that World War III started months ago? That would
1:36.8	seem, if not plausible, at least possible. And in this context, it remains hard to believe that we're returning Donald Trump to the
1:47.4	White House. There are just so many reasons why this seems like a bad idea. To name only one,
1:54.3	he is the sort of president who thinks that Pete Hegseth should run our Department of Defense.
2:00.0	As most of you know, the list of Hegseth's run our Department of Defense. As most of you know, the list of
2:01.4	Hegs' disqualifying sins is so long and miscellaneous that it's hard to perceive his
	...

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