#179 — The Unquiet Mind

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

🗓️ 17 December 2019

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Judson Brewer about addiction, craving, and mindfulness. They discuss the nature of reward-based learning, the role of subjective bias in addiction, the neuroscience of craving, the neural correlates of the sense of self, real-time neuroimaging, effort and effortlessness in meditation, smoking cessation through mindfulness, the difference between dopamine-driven reward and happiness, how to make meditation a habit, working with anxiety, and other topics.

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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
0:22.0	you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing
0:26.4	partial episodes of the podcast. If you'd like access to full episodes, you'll need to subscribe
0:31.7	at samherris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher,
0:37.3	along with other subscriber-only content. And as always, I never want money to be the reason why
0:42.4	someone can't listen to the podcast. So if you can't afford a subscription, there's an option at
0:47.0	samherris.org to request a free account. And we grant 100% of those requests. No questions asked.
0:52.8	Okay, well, 2020 is upon us. Where are the flying cars? Surely the future officially begins now.
1:07.6	Okay, just brief housekeeping here. The waking up app is now unlocked until the end of the year.
1:15.4	So if you're interested in trying it or you're already using it and you want to recommend it to
1:20.4	others, now's a very good time because all of the content is available until New Year's Day.
1:28.4	And I hope you enjoy it. As always, if you have any issues with the app, please contact support
1:34.9	at wakingup.com and they will sort you out. And today's conversation is appearing both on the
1:41.3	app and the podcast. That doesn't usually happen, but sometimes it's a conversation that seems
1:47.9	irrelevant to both audiences. And this is one of those times. Today I'm speaking with Judson Brewer.
1:56.2	Jud is the director of research and innovation at the mindfulness center and associate
2:00.3	professor and psychiatrist at the School of Medicine at Brown University. He's also a research
2:05.5	affiliate at MIT. And before that, he held research and teaching positions at Yale University
2:11.6	and at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. Judd is also the founder of a
2:16.7	digital therapeutics platform, Mind Sciences. And the author of the book, The Craving Mind,
2:22.8	from cigarettes to smartphones to love why we get hooked and how we can break bad habits.
2:29.9	And in this episode, we talk about mindfulness and addiction and the nature of reward-based
	...

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