#488 — Ego, Ecstasy, and Equanimity
Sam Harris interviews a philosopher of mind and public intellectual about his career, intellectual approach, and upbringing by his mother Susan Harris, a pioneering television writer and creator of Golden Girls and Soap who became one of the most successful sitcom writers in history.
Summary
The episode opens with Sam Harris introducing his guest as a philosopher of mind with a PhD in neuroscience who has created the Waking Up app and podcast, and functions as a public intellectual bringing scientific and philosophical perspectives to contemporary issues. The guest describes himself as primarily interested in philosophy of mind and moral philosophy, with a focus on how scientific understanding should inform ethics, policy, and conceptions of human flourishing, arguing against basing ethics on ancient religious texts rather than 21st-century secular rationality.
The conversation then shifts to the guest's mother, Susan Harris, a groundbreaking television writer and producer. Harris created or co-created numerous influential shows including Golden Girls, Soap, Benson, and wrote landmark episodes like the famous Maud abortion episode that drew 60 million viewers. The guest describes her as one of the top three greatest female sitcom writers ever, noting her exceptional productivity—she wrote 75 episodes of Soap over approximately two and a half years working solo, an extraordinary feat in television writing.
Susan Harris's path to success is presented as unconventional and remarkable. After the guest's father left when he was two and a half years old, she had no safety net and minimal child support (receiving only one $500 check). Despite having no prior writing experience beyond being an English major who loved reading fiction, she watched television one day and decided she could write scripts. She sold her first script for $2,000 to a show called Then Came Bronson, then worked her way up through writing for Love American Style and Norman Lear productions before creating her own shows with producers Paul Witt and Tony Thomas.
The guest recalls a formative moment when his mother presented him with a choice: she could work harder to build wealth and eventually afford a pool like his friend's, but this would mean spending more time with babysitters. At age seven or eight, he apparently chose the pool, a decision his mother honored. As her career took off when he was around 12-13, the family's circumstances improved significantly, though the guest notes the wealth itself didn't feel transformative beyond the physical change of houses.
Despite her demanding career, the guest's mother was remarkably adventurous, traveling extensively with him around the world—to Africa, Europe, and China when it opened up—journeys she hadn't taken herself as a young person due to lack of resources. This despite being a single mother in her 30s and 40s, which the guest characterizes as brave for the time. By his teenage years, he had traveled to many places with her. The guest saw his father only twice a year—about two weeks at Christmas and three weeks in summer.
About this episode
<p>Sam Harris speaks with Neal Brennan about the experiences that shaped his life and work. They discuss Sam's mother's television career, growing up with an absent father, his struggles with perfectionism, his first experience with MDMA, dropping out of Stanford, meditation retreats, spiritual charisma and claims of psychic powers, the illusion of self, the limits of pacifism, deleting Twitter, Trump and the politics of shamelessness, hypocrisy and vice signaling, the future of American democracy, and other topics.</p> <p>If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at <a href="http://samharris.org/subscribe" rel="noopener" target="_blank">samharris.org/subscribe</a>.</p>
Key Insights
- The guest argues that scientific understanding of the human mind and brain should inform public policy and ethics, rather than relying on ancient religious texts, positioning himself as bringing secular rationality to contentious topics.
- Susan Harris became one of the greatest sitcom writers in television history despite having no prior writing experience, instead relying on her education in English and love of fiction, suggesting that domain expertise can be built rapidly outside traditional career paths.
- Susan Harris's productivity in television was exceptional by industry standards—she single-handedly wrote 75 episodes of Soap over approximately 2.5 years, a feat the guest notes very few writers have matched even with collaborative teams.
- The guest's mother made an explicit sacrifice-based choice to pursue career ambition with her young son, presenting it as a decision that would affect his quality of life, and he consented to reduced parental availability in exchange for material comfort at an unusually young age.
- Despite achieving wealth and professional success, the guest characterizes the material improvements from his mother's career success as less transformative than expected, suggesting that wealth accumulation after childhood poverty may have limited psychological impact on day-to-day experience.
Topics
Transcript
You're listening to Making Sense with Sam Harris. This is the free version of the podcast, so you'll only hear the first part of today's conversation. If you want the full episode and every episode, you can subscribe at SamHarris.org. There are no ads on this show. It runs entirely on subscriber support. If you enjoy what we're doing here and find it valuable, please consider subscribing today. and find it valuable, please consider subscribing today. Guys, my guest today is, it's hard to even describe what you've blossomed into. He's got an app called Waking Up. He's got a podcast. He's got a sub stack and books. How do you describe yourself at this point? Yeah, I'm rarely in…
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