#488 — Ego, Ecstasy, and Equanimity

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.