#104 — The Lessons of Death

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

🗓️ 15 November 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Frank Ostaseski about death and dying—and about how the awareness of death can improve our lives in each moment.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
0:12.1	hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing
0:16.2	the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
0:20.7	Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed
0:26.1	to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads
0:31.2	on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.
0:35.8	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:47.0	Well today's topic is a topic we all think about while doing our best not to think about it.
0:52.2	The topic is death. And how we think about death changes depending on whether we're thinking about
1:01.8	dying ourselves or about losing the people we love. But whichever side of the coin we take here,
1:10.2	death is really an ever-present reality for us. And it is so whether we're thinking about it or not.
1:18.4	It's always announcing itself in the background on the news. In the stories we hear about the lives
1:27.8	of others, in our concerns about our own health, in the attention we pay when crossing the street.
1:37.6	If you observe yourself closely, you'll see that you spend a fair amount of energy each day,
1:43.6	try not to die, and has long been noted by philosophers and contemporatives and poets.
1:55.2	Death makes a mockery of almost everything else we spend our lives doing.
2:00.8	Just take a moment to reflect on how you've spent your day so far, the kinds of things that
2:06.2	captured your attention, the things that you've been genuinely worried about.
2:10.8	Think of the last argument you had with your spouse. Think of the last hour you spent on social media.
2:20.8	Over the last few days, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find a new
2:25.4	font for my podcast. This is literally absorbed hours of my time. So if you had stopped me at any
2:33.6	point in the last 48 hours and asked me what I'm up to, what really concerns me, what deep problem
	...

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