Psychedelics Don't Distort Reality — They Reveal How Your Brain Constructs It @samharrisorg

Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

Get 30 Days of Waking Up Free → wakingup.com/makingsense
Learn more → wakingup.com/LSD

UNRAVELLING THE DREAM: A New Documentary Executive Produced by Sam Harris

What you perceive as reality is a controlled hallucination your brain constructs moment by moment. And you are part of it.

Unraveling the Dream explores what happens when that construction begins to fall apart—when the boundary between you and the world disintegrates, and the sense of self drops away.

Revisiting Aldous Huxley’s early experiments with mescaline, examining the latest neuroscience of consciousness, and drawing on interviews with leading researchers, the film follows a central question:

What are we, really, when the illusion dissolves?

And once we’ve seen it, how do we live it?

Featuring:
Anil Seth
Robin Carhart-Harris
Shamil Chandaria

Psychedelic medicine should only be used under the guidance of a trained professional and in accordance with local laws.

FILM CREDITS

Written, Directed & Edited by
Jake Orthwein

Executive Producers
Sam Harris
Jaron Lowenstein

Animation Leads
Yuval Haker
Vincenzo Lodigiani

Additional Animation
Alon Sivan

Graphics
Guy Trefler

Sound Design
Joe Basile

Additional Editing by
Alex Hadden

Poster design
DGSF

#UnravelingTheDream #WakingUp #Psychedelics #Consciousness #Meditation

Psychedelics Dont Distort Reality — They Reveal How Your Brain Constructs It

$The Limits of AI Understanding Sam Harris speaks with Judea Pearl about causality, AI, and antisemitism. They discuss why LLMs won’t spawn AGI, alignment concerns in the race for AGI, Pearl’s public life after the murder of his son Daniel, the post-October 7th shift toward open anti-Zionism, the overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the misuse of “Islamophobia,” Israel’s fracture under Netanyahu, confronting anti-Zionism in universities, and other topics. Judea Pearl is the Chancellors professor of computer science and statistics at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Cognitive Systems Laboratory. He is known internationally for his contributions to artificial intelligence, human reasoning and philosophy of science. He has received numerous scientific awards, including the 2012 ACM A.M. Turing Award (often described as the Nobel Prize of computing). Judea is the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. He also writes and lectures on Jewish identity and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002 2025 collects his essays on these topics. Website: https://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at https://samharris.org/subscribe/ OR become a channel member to access episodes on YouTube. For those who cant afford the full subscription price, we offer partial scholarships https://www.samharris.org/subscribe/scholarship Stay updated on new episodes, essays, and events — subscribe to Sam Harris’s free newsletter: https://samharris.org/newsletter-signup/$

There Is No Comparison Between Israel and Hamas

If You Always Assume Youre Being Lied To, Youll Believe Anything

If We Cared About People Like We Care About AI...

1 in a Million People Would Make This Decision

People Might Start Giving Up On Social Media

Tucker and Candace Are Super-Spreaders of Antisemitism

Final Thoughts on Free Will (Episode #241)

Muslims Need a Renaissance/Reformation/Civil War