Sam Harris came to prominence in 2004 with the publication of his first book, The End of Faith.

It was a harsh criticism of organized religion and it spent 33 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

He's got a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and he's been described as an evangelical atheist.

So, how is it even possible that 15 years later, Mind Body Spirit Magazine identified him as the 13th most influential spiritual person on the planet?

Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

I think like a scientist, I view the world to the lens of data, skepticism and hypothesis testing.

I'm not the slightest bit religious.

In spite of that though, I have to confess, I've always been curious about spirituality.

But I was embarrassed about it and I kept that curiosity to myself because I felt like there was no place for spirituality in the scientific mind.

Well that all changed when I read Sam Harris's amazing 2014 book Waking Up, A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.

It's a rigorous scientific exploration of spirituality and it made him the thinking person's guru.

The subsequent release of the wildly popular Waking Up app, his 2020 book Making Sense Conversations on Consciousness, Morality and the Future of Humanity,

and his Making Sense podcast have further cemented his guru status.

I've never spoken to Sam Harris before and I'm so curious to see what he's like.

Will he talk like a scientist or a guru? Will he be full of ego or free from ego?

I can't tell you Sam how much I've been looking forward to getting to talk to you after reading so much of your amazing work.

Oh nice, thank you, it's a pleasure.

I know lots of scientists and I find it easy to talk to neuroscientists and I know lots of people who are students of meditation and mindfulness

and I know how to talk to them and I know how to talk to atheists and how to talk to best sound authors.

But I talked to them all differently and I'm not sure how I'm going to talk to you because you're all these things rolled into one.

I had talked to a Venn diagram, that's the problem.

Exactly, so you have this sort of intimidating effect on me. Do you think you have that effect more generally or is that something weird about me?

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