My Audience
Those of you who have followed me for several years know that I often explore controversial issues, without concern for political alliances or popular opinion. As a consequence, those first drawn to my work on one topic may be later startled—or worse—by my views on another. It is never my goal to be merely provocative, much less offensive, but the resulting whiplash has produced exactly the type of audience I want: One that is steadily purged of partisans and dogmatists.
I’ve built an audience that values how I arrive at conclusions, rather than the conclusions themselves. As a consequence, I’m free to say exactly what I think about politics, religion, science, philosophy, spirituality, violence, and any other topic that captures my attention. As a matter of principle, I wouldn’t do this any other way, but I couldn’t do it this way without my subscribers.
My Digital Business Model
No one knows what the best business model is for digital media—and what seems right today, might prove ruinous in the future. As consumers, each of us now limps and lurches across the information landscape, tethered to dozens of competing apps and platforms. Some media companies charge subscriptions. Some extract and sell our data. Some assail us with ads. And some do all these things at once and damage their brands in the process.1
No one has figured this out, even if some are succeeding financially. And yet, I believe I’ve found the best business model available to me.
If paying the full-price for this Substack and the Making Sense podcast causes you financial stress, you can apply for a partial scholarship at samharris.org/subscribe.
Those of you who support my work have given me the freedom to explore new ways of using my time creatively, unencumbered by pressure from sponsors or publishers—or even from you, my own audience. This is an absolute gift. And it is one which I will strive to return to you by speaking and writing honestly about things that matter.
My Terms of Service
Having abandoned the digital killing fields of Twitter/X, I know what I don’t want in an online community. This Substack should be a place for productive conversation, on more or less any topic. But intentions matter.
There will be an ironclad no-assholes policy, enforced with the apparent capriciousness of a bolt of lightning. If you ever find yourself wondering whether to say something vicious to another subscriber here, please take a moment to wonder some more. Just like in life, once you’re gone, you’re gone for good.
So don’t think of this page as another town square, where decent people can cross the street to avoid your ranting or frottage. Think of it as a dinner party, where your host seems to know more than you expected about the arms trade, how people sometimes disappear without a trace in the developing world, and where Vladimir Putin keeps his money.
Enjoy!
—Sam
Sam Harris
Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times best sellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. 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.
Sam’s work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), The Annals of Neurology, among others. He also hosts the Making Sense podcast, which was selected by Apple as one of the “iTunes Best” and has won a Webby Award for best podcast in the Science & Education category.
Sam received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He has also practiced meditation for more than 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. Sam has created the Waking Up app for anyone who wants to learn to meditate in a modern, scientific context.
