Sam Harris speaks with Nicholas Christakis about technology, society, and human nature. They discuss the harms of modern communication technology, polarization and anomie, how AI agents can improve human cooperation, the social implications of humanoid robots, Christakis’s experience at the center of the woke moral panic at Yale, the Trump administration’s assault on American universities and science, the collapse of public trust in institutions, and other topics.
Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. His work is in the fields of network science and biosocial science. He directs the Human Nature Lab and is the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2006; the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017; and the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.
Website: https://humannaturelab.net/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NAChristakis