Can We Talk About Scary Ideas?

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Peter Singer, Francesca Minerva, and Jeff McMahan about the newly launched Journal of Controversial Ideas. They discuss the ethics of discussing dangerous ideas, the possibility of having a market in vaccines, the taboo around the topic of race and IQ, the relationship between activism and academia, the shallow-pond argument for doing good, and other topics.

Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University. He focuses on practical ethics, and is best known for his book Animal Liberation and for his writings about global poverty.

Francesca Minerva is a research fellow at the University of Milan and a co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Her research focuses on applied ethics, medical and bioethics, discrimination, and academic freedom.

Jeff McMahan is a professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University. He focuses on a range of issues related to harm and benefit—including war, self- and other-defense, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, personal identity, the moral status of animals, causing people to exist, disability, philanthropy, and other topics.

Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events.

Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

Harris's work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.

Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.