Welcome to the Waking Up Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay, some housekeeping here.

I have a new event series to announce. It's called Experiments in Conversation. And

I'll be kicking this off with Eric Weinstein in January. January 28th will be in Detroit

at the Fillmore. On the 29th will be in Milwaukee at the PAPSED Theatre. And on the 30th will

be in Chicago at the Chicago Theatre. And the idea with Experiments in Conversation

is to launch a series of events that is about more than my events. I'll participate in

many of them, especially in the beginning. But there are so many great speakers out there.

And I want to create a speaking series that could eventually take place in many cities

simultaneously. It'll be conversation-based. These are not lectures. We've been thinking

internally about this being TED for two, where the TED conference has significantly refined

and even institutionalized the short lecture. We're going to attempt to do something similar

for conversations. And to this end we'll be looking for public intellectuals and creative

people who are willing to take some risks and think out loud on important and controversial

topics. We're looking for people who are not cowed by the prospect of saying something.

So surprising or counterintuitive that people might take offense at it. I can't tell you

how stifling the current environment is for speech with the exception of podcasts. It

is just crazy out there. So I'm hoping this series can help us all recalibrate a little

bit. Now in a perfect world there will one day be hundreds of events like this happening

each year all over the world. But we'll see how it goes with the first three. And I really

can't think of a better person to kick this off with than Eric Weinstein. Eric is one

of the most consistently interesting and courageous thinkers. I know. He's a real polymath. And

in my experience we can talk about almost anything. And it's fun and illuminating and just

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