Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing

the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed

to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads

on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.

So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

Okay, well I'm going to do a Ask Me Anything podcast this time around.

Now, as some of you know, I often set out to do these and then answer one question for

20 minutes or more and don't get very far. And I'm afraid that's what's going to happen

this time around. I'll answer a few questions in a rather long-winded way and then hopefully do some

rapid-fire answers and get through many of your questions. I must say I really appreciate

the response I get whenever I go out for questions. I get hundreds. Honestly, I can't even read

all of your questions. But I've read many of them and I just, you know, it's very hard to choose.

I'll just work through them. But I also have to do a little housekeeping in this podcast. So I

will start with that. First, I'm recording this podcast on New Year's Day. So Happy New Year,

everyone. And I ended the year in contentious fashion on Twitter. I don't know why I used Twitter.

If I treated Twitter the way I treat Facebook, I would never have any of these entanglements

that I so often discuss with you. I would never notice what was being said about me or

what sort of skirmishes I was being dragged into. And therefore, I'd never be tempted to respond.

So it's a perhaps deserves some rethinking, whether it's worth my paying attention. But as I'll

tell you in a moment, at least two of my upcoming guests are coming on the podcast simply because

...