Throw Open the Gates

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris responds to criticism of his views on the Apple-FBI controversy and then speaks with Maryam Namazie about friendly fire among secularists, profiling, the immigration crisis in Europe, and other topics.

Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born atheist, a secularist, and a human rights activist. She is a spokesperson for a variety of organizations, including Fitnah (a movement for women’s liberation), Equal Rights Now, One Law for All (against Sharia Law in Britain), and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She hosts a weekly television program in Persian and English called Bread and Roses, which is broadcast in Iran and the Middle East via New Channel TV.

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.