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

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Well, I just got back from BAMF where I attended the TED Summit and I brought a portable

recording device to the conference on the odd chance that I might find someone worth talking to who

wanted to record a podcast. Needless to say there were many people worth talking to,

but not much time to sit down and do a podcast, but I did record one conversation with the

philosopher Dan Dennett, who probably needs no introduction here. As many of you know, Dan and I

have been brothers and arms for many years, along with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens,

as a so-called New Atheist, or the Four Horsemen after a video by that name that we recorded in

Hitch's apartment some years back. Dan and I once debated together on the same team,

along with Hitch at the Ciudad de la Sidez conference in Mexico, where we were pitted against

Dinesh D'Souza and Rabbi Shmouli Boateak and Robert Wright, I believe, and Nassim Talib

got in there somehow. I hope it doesn't seem too self-serving or contemptuous of our opponents

to say that we came out none the worse for wear on that occasion, and needless to say that video

is online for all to see until the end of the world. But as many of you know, Dan and I had a very

barbed exchange on the topic of free will some years later, and that was a little over two years

ago, and we never resolved it. I came out with my short book on free will and Dan reviewed it,

...