This is an interesting concept, really. Making Sense is the name of Sam Harris’ podcast, which is based mostly around interviews with smart people. As of right now (03/24/2026), he’s done 466 of these since the first episode back in July 2011. Not everyone is into podcasts, of course, so, in May 2020, Harris published a book of some of his favorites as Making Sense: Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity. But he also put out an audiobook version of the same thing, which uses the original interviews from the podcast. So, it comes full circle.
Harris, whose background is in philosophy and neuroscience, tends to focus on interviews with philosophers and physicists. I’ve always enjoyed his podcast, but I haven’t listened to it much since he put it behind a paywall. I don’t begrudge him that. It’s good content, he has the right to charge for it, and charging for it makes it sustainable without having to rely on advertising. The first thirty minutes (or so) of each podcast is free, as are occasional episodes that he decides to publish for free. But I’m not a subscriber, so catching this “greatest hits” collection on sale at Chirp was pretty cool.
That was a lot of preamble. What about the interviews themselves? The audiobook is 22.5 hours, including interviews with Nick Bostrom, David Chalmers, David Deutsch, Daniel Kahneman, David Krakauer, Glenn Loury, Thomas Metzinger, Robert Sapolsky, Anil Seth, Timothy Snyder, and Max Tegmark. A lot has changed since 2020, and the oldest of these goes back further than that. But most of these conversations have enduring value. There was really only one that I found myself wanting to skip, but I didn’t. Nevertheless, I found the collection educational and entertaining. There are high points from every interview that will be kicking around in my brain for some time. It’s really hard to pick a favorite. It’s a nice collection.
Note
The original version of this post was published as my Goodreads review of the audiobook. Any future refinements will be made here, not there.