I realize basically every bad thing that had happened in my life in the last 10 years was the

result of my engagement with Twitter. We're all staring into this fun house mirror where we're

seeing the most grotesque version of the people we don't like. Sam Harris, neuroscientist,

philosopher, and best-selling author. He divides his genius between two

interwoven missions, bringing equipoise to our minds through the waking up app and bringing reason

to our culture wars on making sense. This week, in part one, we explore his making sense brain,

diving into the outrage economy, political tribalism,

and how social media is fracturing our society and degrading our attention.

I do think the platforms are responsible for polluting the information landscape with

algorithmic boosting of speech that produces outrage,

the signal we're boosting is contempt for those we view as our enemies.

Does that make society more susceptible to authoritarianism?

There is a direct path to authoritarianism because what it directly produces

hyperpartisanship. The extremes are getting more extreme.

Okay, Sam Harris. What a treat. Thanks, man. Yeah, great to see you. I was reading, waking up,

I think probably for the fifth or six time

earlier this week. And there's a significant section in the book that's dedicated to the

split brain experiment. So this is a, I believe, an experiment done by a guy, a researcher named

Sperry. Yeah, Roger Sperry. A few people collaborated, but he was the kind of the lead name and got the Nobel Prize.

Yeah, and this experiment explored the phenomenon of essentially severing the corpus colossum,

and you just feel free to correct me at any point.

But when you sever that comitur that connects, the left and right brain,

...