Sam Harris: Waking up (2013- )

Sam Harris' career as a public intellectual started in the aftermath of 9/11. To him - similarly to Christopher Hitchens - the terrorist attack was a life-changing event. It triggered him to write a book dedicated to expose faith in the supernatural as a malignant force threatening civilisation. In 2007 he became one of the four horsemen of the New Atheists and spent most of the next decade participating in public debates over religion, Islam, free speech and science. Almost all events are available on Youtube and I encourage everyone to watch them. Harris is a terrific debater. Incredibly smart, eloquent and witty.

Yet real fame arrived in 2014 with a Hollywood A-lister's public meltdown. Ben Affleck decided somewhat late to jump on the bandwagon and launched a surprise diatribe on him on Bill Maher's show, accusing Harris of racism and bigotry. It didn't quite have the intended effect, but put Harris in the centre of public attention.

Harris is a unique and somewhat unlikely character. Before he received BSc in philosophy and a PhD in neuroscience, he spent years practicing meditation under different gurus in East Asia and self-experimented with psychedelics. He is a staunch materialist who believes there is room and need in life for spirituality, but not religion. He also is an advocate of Western values and science (and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu).

Following Harris can also serve as a gateway drug to the so called Intellectual Dark Web. The goofy name (born after one podcast episode Sam needed to come up with a title in 15 seconds) covers a bunch of very interesting and diverse characters including Jordan Peterson, Christina Hoff Summers, Brett Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, Heather Heying, ...... Many of them, especially Peterson, are the bête noires of mainstream media, which treats them as either curiosities or downright torchbearers of the alt-right. Which is a mistake (or lie), because these people - with the exceptions of Rogan and Rubin, who host the conversations - are intellectual heavyweights, who reflect on today's very real problems with force and clarity.

The Waking up podcast started 5 years ago. Now more than 140 episodes behind it is still a joy to listen every week. Harris interviews astrophysicists, neuroscientists, journalists, hostage negotiators, political analyists, historians, philosophers, stage magicians, ex-neo-nazis, you name it. Just by listening to it a year now I picked up at least half a dozen books of authors whom I'd never heard before, and I follow the public appearances of another dozen of them.

The last two decades have seemed to drive the trend of ever shortening attention spans. The James Damore case proved that the effort of 4 minutes continuous reading is too much for most modern people. Talk show and TV interviews rarely exceed 10 minutes. Careers can be destroyed in 140-characters. Yet there is a counter-wave. Popular long conversation format podcasts are gaining traction and the world is all the better for it.