Annaka Harris

Since 2005 she has volunteered with the Inner Kids Foundation founded by Susan Kaiser Greenland, teaching mindfulness to children.⁠[1]

In 2013 Four Elephants Press published her children’s book I Wonder.⁠[1]

Sam HarrisSam HarrisSam Harris is an American author, philosopher and neuroscience PhD, host of the Making Sense podcast and founder of the Waking Up meditation app; he rose to prominence with The End of Faith and other critiques of religion and is regarded as a leading figure of the “New Atheism,” and has since written and spoken on morality, free will, meditation and politics, often provoking controversy.Open the full entry introduced it as the first book by “my wife and editor,” Annaka, intended to teach very young children and their parents to cherish the feeling of “not knowing” as the basis of all discovery.⁠[2]

In December 2015 she wrote that she had edited Susan Kaiser Greenland’s new book Mindful Games and helped turn her children’s curriculum into the Mindful Games Activity Cards, a set of 55 cards each devoted to a game or activity.⁠[1]

On June 4, 2019, her Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind was published; the book surveys definitions, philosophies and scientific findings about consciousness, asking whether it could be an illusion or a universal property of matter and who or what might possess it in the age of artificial intelligence.⁠[3][4]

The next day Sam Harris discussed the new book with his wife, Annaka, on episode 159 of his Making Sense podcast.⁠[5]

By August 2019 the book had reached the New York Times bestseller list.⁠[6]

The audiobook, read by Harris herself, was a 2020 Audies finalist; AudioFile’s review praised her accessible writing and steady, clear narration.⁠[3]

On February 26, 2020, she published an essay in Nautilus on the “hard problem” of consciousness, introducing panpsychism, the view that consciousness is embedded in matter itself; she wrote that panpsychism does not require believing in a specific “rock consciousness.”⁠[7]

In 2021 she published “A Solution to the Combination Problem and the Future of Panpsychism” in a Journal of Consciousness Studies discussion of panpsychism, arguing that consciousness should not be viewed in reference to subjects and that the concept of a subject is born of the illusion of self, so panpsychism need not face a combination problem.⁠[8]

On May 13, 2022, she published “What Is Time?” in Nautilus, drawing on conversations with physicist Carlo Rovelli and others made for her podcast documentary series to explore the idea that the flow of time may not be part of reality’s fundamental structure, and where time and consciousness overlap.⁠[9]

She appeared on episode 326 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description identifies her as the author of Conscious; topics included free will, consciousness, depression, psychedelics, meditation, AI sentience and suffering.⁠[10]

On March 18, 2025, her audio documentary Lights On was released, narrated by her and produced and directed by Jay Shapiro and Harris; featuring Brian GreeneBrian GreeneBrian Greene is an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University who works on superstring theory; he is known for popular-science books such as The Elegant Universe and the NOVA documentaries adapted from them, and he co-founded the World Science Festival with his wife, Tracy Day.Open the full entry, David EaglemanDavid EaglemanDavid Eagleman is an American neuroscientist and author, now an adjunct professor at Stanford University, who studies sensory substitution, time perception, synesthesia and neurolaw; he wrote Incognito, Livewired and the story collection Sum, presented the PBS documentary The Brain with David Eagleman and the podcast Inner Cosmos, and co-founded neurotech companies including Neosensory and BrainCheck.Open the full entry, Anil Seth, Christof KochChristof KochChristof Koch is a neuroscientist who studies the neural basis of consciousness; he collaborated with Francis Crick on consciousness research, taught at Caltech from 1986 to 2013, served from 2011 as chief scientific officer and then president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and is a leading proponent of integrated information theory.Open the full entry, Sean CarrollSean CarrollSean Carroll (Sean M. Carroll) is an American theoretical physicist and science writer who is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute; he works on cosmology, gravitation, the foundations of quantum mechanics and complexity, has written books including From Eternity to Here and Something Deeply Hidden, and hosts the Mindscape podcast.Open the full entry, Philip GoffPhilip GoffPhilip Goff is a philosopher and professor of philosophy at Durham University who studies consciousness and the ultimate nature of reality; he is best known for defending panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world, and is the author of Galileo’s Error and Why? The Purpose of the Universe.Open the full entry and others, it asks whether consciousness could be a fundamental building block of the universe, like gravity.⁠[11]

On March 25, Sam Harris discussed the ten-part documentary with her on Making Sense episode 404, covering the hard problem of consciousness, split-brain patients and what fundamental consciousness could mean for physics.⁠[12]

As of October 2026 her next book, Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution, is scheduled for April 2027; she also works as an editor and consultant for science writers in neuroscience and physics, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Nautilus and the Journal of Consciousness Studies.⁠[13]

The publisher’s description says the book draws on conversations with Brian Greene, David Eagleman, Anil Seth, Carlo Rovelli and others to explore the possibility that consciousness is a fundamental property of spacetime rather than a product of complex brain activity.⁠[14]

She recorded a meditation course for children aged six and up on the Waking Up app.⁠[15]

She appeared with Susan Kaiser Greenland on Dan Harris’s podcast 10% Happier (episode 121) to discuss teaching mindfulness to children.⁠[16]

She has also appeared on Mind Chat, hosted by Philip Goff and Keith Frankish; the episode notes describe her as sympathetic to panpsychism, comparing her reasons with Goff’s and working through her disagreement with Frankish, an illusionist.⁠[17]

She and her husband, the neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, have two children.⁠[18]

Personal website: Public link: https://annakaharris.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/annakaharris (opens in a new window)⁠[10]