I wrote this a year ago, and, unfortunately, much of it still holds.

As a supporter of Sam, I’m a little disappointed in a few areas. On the topic of his podcast, the classic “housekeeping” effectively no longer exists. “No housekeeping today” is the new intro to the podcast. The subscriber content is minimal. That which does exist (Zoom calls) are unavailable to me within the UK due to differences in time zones. He has relegated his thoughts on contemporary events to infrequent appearances elsewhere, such as on Best of The Spectator or BBC’s Hard Talk. The recently introduced casual format has effectively died off as a means of exploring this topic matter.

Even in the Waking Up app, there is rarely a new daily meditation. Perhaps once a month, I will be treated to a newly recorded meditation. Otherwise, it is a cycle of the same content. Of my complaints, this is the weakest, but it adds to an overall sense of abandonment.

All this is so negative, and I am overwhelmingly grateful for all that Sam does.

However, he now appears to exist within an anti-libertarian bubble perseverating on existential crises. There no longer is an effort to reach across the aisle in any meaningful sense. Those issues on which Sam is most ardent are those which are best candidates for being challenged. Yet Sam converses with those where there exist weaker disagreements couched in a much larger consensus on what Sam considers the “important” issues. I’d include in this libertarianism, health care, Donald Trump, the “infopocalypse”, and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

I’m not sure how alone I am in these parochial concerns. Making Sense still stands as one of my favourite podcasts. I suppose I wanted to vent. Job done.