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

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consider becoming one. I am here with Nicholas Christakis. Nicholas, thanks for joining me again.

Sam, it's so good to see you again.

Yeah, great to see you. Yeah, we don't see each other in person enough or even on the internet enough, but I always love talking to you.

So let's just jump right into it. I'll remind people you are the director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale.

You are both an MD and a sociologist and have the director of the human nature lab at Yale. You are both an

MD and a sociologist and have studied many interesting topics related to, I guess, how human

beings and now technology affect one another. And we have too much to talk about. I think I want

to start with the question of, I guess I just want

your post-mortem on the present, like this last decade, what has technology, specifically

information technology, done to us? Yeah, so I think for sure, I think we are going to see the other

side of our present dilemma. I think it is going to take half a generation

to really be on the other side of it because I think we've dug ourselves into quite a hole.

I share the opinion, I suspect with you and certainly with people like John Hight and others

that that kind of technology that we've invented or the turns that our technology has taken,

our communication technology has taken in the last 10 years, have so far been quite harmful to us, whatever other benefits

they've had. I think they've contributed to this polarization, they've contributed to Anomi,

they've contributed to some of the mental health crises we've had. I think they've also led to a

surveillance state, not just abroad, but shockingly in our own country where these technologies are being used in ways that I would regard as quasi totalitarian or at least pose the threat of that. I had a friend long ago, I still have him, he's still a friend of mine. And years ago, he told me he didn't use credit cards, he refused to get a cell phone and he wanted, you know, he was trying to be off the grid

because he didn't want to be surveyed. And I thought he was like a Luddite nut. Yet now, you know,

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