I'm delighted to introduce you to someone we admire tremendously, Sam Harris.

Bestselling author and creator of the Waking Up app, which I recommend you download from the app store.

Sam's practical science-backed approach to mindfulness meditation inspires so many on our team.

Today's episode is something of an experiment for us. It is adapted from an interview with

Sam about meditation by Belgian neuroscientist and neurologist Steven Lowry's, but Sam aired on his

Making Sense podcast. Throughout their conversation, Sam talks with clarity about what meditation is,

using his own experience to consider why we might do it and how we can help us understand our minds.

To put the episode together, we edited Sam's response to Steven's questions in a cohesive way,

adding music to underscore and amplify the episode's moments of beauty and poetry.

It's such a gift to hear Sam describe the nature reality, what it means to cut through

delusional thinking, and crucially, how our mindfulness practice can help us show up for the

people in our lives in a more meaningful way. It's a heady experience to follow Sam on this journey

of curiosity and mastery. You'll find it a bit more intellectual than our typical story,

but it has such beauty and depth, and we hope you find this special episode as useful a tool for

deepening your practice as we do. The body will act, the body breathing,

your senses open, your mind open, meeting the world.

When I was 13, my best friend died. When I was 17, my father died. When I was 18, my girlfriend

had broken up with me in college and in freshman year. I had a very lucky life at that point,

all things considered. But those experiences hit me really hard. I was really unhappy. I was

probably in some kind of clinical state of depression for several months after that. I was not myself,

and it was because I was thinking, incessantly, about what I had lost. I was meditating on

loss and loneliness and grief and had absolutely no insight into this process. I was to say,

...