Making Sense with Sam Harris

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#388 — What Is Life?

Sam Harris speaks with Sara Imari Walker about a scientific understanding of life. They discuss the contributions of physics to this topic, Erwin Schrödinger, the inadequacy of standard definitions of life, the prospect of "artificial" life, the role of information, constructor theory, assembly theory, the space of all possible structures, a "block universe," the existence of abstract objects like numbers, the Fermi paradox, the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe, experiments that could decide how likely life is to emerge, the possibility of a Great Filter, the number of Earth-like worlds, 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.

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  #387 — Politics & Power

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  #386 — Information & Social Order

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  #385 — AI Utopia

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  #384 — Stress Testing Our Democracy

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  #383 — Where Are the Grown-Ups?

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  #382 — The Eye of Nature

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  #381 — Delusions, Right and Left

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  #380 — The Roots of Attention

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  #379 — Regulating Artificial Intelligence

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  #378 — Digital Delusions

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  #377 — The Future of Psychedelic Medicine 2

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  #376 — How Democracies Fail

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  #375 — On the Attempted Assassination of President Trump

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  #374 — Consciousness and the Physical World

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  #373 — Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism