Welcome to the Making Sense podcast.

This is Sam Harris.

Okay, so today I'm bringing you a conversation that I originally recorded for the Waking Up

app.

And we were at least at there as a series of separate lessons a couple of weeks back.

But the response has been such that I wanted to share it here on the podcast and put it

outside the paywall.

This seems like a better holiday message than most.

As I think many of you know, Waking Up isn't just a meditation app at this point.

It's really the place where I do most of my thinking about what it means to live a good

life.

And this conversation is about generosity and about how we should think about doing good

in the world.

Increasingly I'm looking to use this podcast and the Waking Up app to do more than merely

spread what I consider to be good ideas.

That's their primary purpose, obviously.

But I want to help solve some of the worst problems we face more directly than just

talking about them.

And I want to do this systematically, really thinking through what it takes to save the

most lives or reduce the worst suffering or mitigate the most catastrophic risks.

And to this end, I've taken the pledge over at giving what we can, which is the foundation

on effective altruism started by the philosopher as Wil McCaskill and Toby Ord, both of whom

...