#484 — Artificial Intimacy

**Sam Harris** (0:02)
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**Sam Harris** (0:24)
I'm here with Paul Bloom. Paul, it's great to see you again.

**Paul Bloom** (0:27)
It's always great to see you, Sam. It's always too long between our conversations.

**Sam Harris** (0:30)
Yeah. No, I haven't checked to see how long it's been, but I'm sure there's a lot that we can talk about here. You're one of the shortlist of people who I know I'm going to have a good conversation with no matter what's happening and no matter how little prep either of us do. It's like a phone call that I know I'm going to enjoy.

**Paul Bloom** (0:45)
I appreciate it. I've been avoiding you since the Epstein files, but I decided to nonetheless push through despite your prominence in those documents.

**Sam Harris** (0:54)
Yeah.
Well, we're talking offline about the World Cup. Did I glean correctly that you're not as obsessed with it as I am? Are you not a many hour a day watcher of soccer at this point?

**Paul Bloom** (1:07)
I'm not. One of my sons came to visit, and he's much more manly than me, so we watched sports together. It's okay.
I don't want to get into this culture war thing. You get too many people to hate me, but soccer is not the most enjoyable sport to watch.

**Sam Harris** (1:24)
You didn't play soccer, I take it, in high school or?

**Paul Bloom** (1:28)
No, hockey.
We played street hockey. Street hockey in the summer and hockey hockey in the winter, but I've kicked around the ball. But have you played?

**Sam Harris** (1:37)
That was the only team sport I played, so I feel it from the inside. But I am the genius who scheduled this podcast recording during the Spain-Portugal elimination match, so I'm the first person I'm going to fire.

**Paul Bloom** (1:50)
Do you have a little screen in front of you?

**Sam Harris** (1:53)
Yeah, I'll be watching the game for the next 90 minutes, so I hope you have a lot to say.

**Paul Bloom** (1:58)
It's long pause.

**Sam Harris** (2:01)
Speaking of bandwidth and claims on your time, you recently became a father, yet again? How long ago did that happen?

**Paul Bloom** (2:08)
Yet again. I have two older sons, terrific boys, 27 and 30, but I now have a proud father of four month and one week old.

**Sam Harris** (2:19)
Nice.

**Paul Bloom** (2:20)
Congratulations. This adorable little girl, I just spent the whole morning with her. We went to the park, we had a bottle.
Good times.

**Sam Harris** (2:27)
Awesome. Well, if memory serves, that's not yet the funnest zone of parenthood, but it's still amazing. That's great.

**Paul Bloom** (2:35)
Do you have an optimal age that you think of?

**Sam Harris** (2:39)
Well, it's probably not four and a half months.

**Paul Bloom** (2:42)
No, I don't know.

**Sam Harris** (2:44)
How is sleep? Is sleep happening?

**Paul Bloom** (2:46)
She's sleeping through the night.

**Sam Harris** (2:48)
That's amazing.

**Paul Bloom** (2:48)
I don't know. I know you had your daughter a while ago, but we have something called a snoo.

**Sam Harris** (2:53)
Is that some kind of swaddle monstrosity?

**Paul Bloom** (2:56)
It's a bassinet. You swaddle up the kid, you clip them into the snoo, and then when they cry, it vibrates. Then it basically vibrations, knock them unconscious, and then they sleep.
Our sleep problems, when she grew old enough to be in the snoo, she's actually sleeping great. But now we have to because unfortunately, the world does not contain snooze, and adults have to sleep without snooze. We now have to get her out of it, and that's going to be a bit of a challenge.

**Sam Harris** (3:18)
All right. Well, this is our first ad on the Making Sense podcast for snoo. Is that the brand?

**Paul Bloom** (3:24)
I highly recommend it. I get 10 percent from all purchases.

**Sam Harris** (3:27)
Recommended by developmental psychologists.

**Paul Bloom** (3:29)
I highly recommend the snoo.

**Sam Harris** (3:31)
Awesome. Okay. So how are you feeling about the world your children will eventually inherit at this point? What's top of mind for you about the unraveling of culture, or anything else that are you optimistic, pessimistic, avert in your eyes?