#412 — Better Things & Better People

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

🗓️ 2 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Rutger Bregman about Rutger’s new book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. They discuss why it seems like we are at the hinge of human history, wealth inequality, how altruism should be rewarded, how we should think about philanthropic billionaires, effective altruism, why empathy is overrated, moral entrepreneurship, universal basic income, work and meaning, existential risk, and other topics.

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Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

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 you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll 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
0:21.9	at samharris.org. There you'll also find our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts
0:27.2	to anyone who can't afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made
0:31.4	possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here,
0:36.1	please consider becoming one.
0:49.9	I am here with Rutger Bregman. Rutger, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Sam.
0:55.9	Yes, nice to finally connect with you. I've been seeing your stuff for a while and just read your book, your newest book, which is Moral Ambition, which is a little bit of a departure in tone.
1:01.5	You've also written Utopia for Realists and humankind. This is much more of a call to action,
1:07.5	and I want to talk about the call. You've also started the school for moral
1:12.3	ambition, which I want to talk about. But before we jump into the book, how would you summarize
1:16.9	your focus as a historian and just as someone who comes to all these topics we're going to
1:24.4	talk about? So my whole career, I've been fascinated by history.
1:28.2	I studied history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
1:31.2	And initially I was a bit frustrated by academia.
1:35.1	You know, it seemed so insulated.
1:37.0	I had this dream once of becoming a professor.
1:40.2	And then maybe when I was 50 or 60, I would finally be allowed to write about the big interesting questions of history.
1:45.9	Like, why have we conquered the globe?
1:48.1	Why did the Industrial Revolution start in England, in the West?
1:52.2	Why not in India or China, for example?
1:54.6	Those were the kind of books that I really loved, you know, Jared Diamond, for example, Gertz, Germs and Steel.
2:00.1	But it started to dawn on me that I would probably have to, you know, Jared Diamond, for example, Gerns, germs and steel. But it started to dawn on me that I would probably have to, you know, specialize first
	...

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