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PODCAST

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

The Michael Shermer Show is a series of long-form conversations between Dr. Michael Shermer and leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.

science natural sciences

All Episodes

02:11:32

163. Helen Pluckrose — Cynical Theories: How Activist...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/03/09

Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn’t practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society? In this wide-ranging conversation Helen Pluckrose recounts the evolution of the dogma that

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01:52:28

162. Benjamin Friedman — Religion and the Rise of...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/03/06

In episode 162 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with one of the nation’s preeminent experts on economic policy, Benjamin Friedman, about his new book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism — a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force — religion. Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets — among economists as well as many ordinary citizens — is a form of religion

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01:02:20

161. Roy Richard Grinker — Nobody’s Normal: How...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/03/02

For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In episode 161 of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer speaks with anthropologist Dr. Roy Richard Grinker about his book Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness which chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma — from the 18th century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Drawing on

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01:36:13

160. Abigail Shrier — Irreversible Damage: The...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/02/27

Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively. But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as “transgender.” These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story

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01:41:27

159. Joshua Glasgow — The Solace: Finding Value in...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/02/23

How can we find solace when we face the death of loved ones? How can we find solace in our own death? When philosopher Joshua Glasgow’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, he struggled to answer these questions for her and for himself. Though death and immortality introduce some of the most basic and existentially compelling questions in philosophy, Glasgow found that the dominant theories came up short. Recalling the last months of his mother’s life, Glasgow reveals the breakthrough he finally

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01:38:04

158. Jason D. Hill — We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/02/20

In this episode Michael Shermer speaks with Jason D. Hill, a black immigrant from Jamaica, about his eloquent appreciation of the American Dream, and why his adopted nation remains the most noble experiment in enabling the pursuit of happiness. Dr. Hill came to this country at the age of 20 and, rather than being faced with intractable racial bigotry, Hill found a land of bountiful opportunity. It has been more than 50 years since the Civil Rights Act enshrined equality under the law for all

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02:02:09

157. Avi Loeb — Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/02/16

According to the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, we have proof of alien existence, and more sightings are coming soon. In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Loeb argued that it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced

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01:36:41

156. Ayaan Hirsi Ali — Prey: Immigration, Islam, and...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/02/09

Why are so few people talking about the eruption of sexual violence and harassment in Europe’s cities? No one in a position of power wants to admit that the problem is linked to the arrival of several million migrants — most of them young men — from Muslim-majority countries. In episode 155, Dr. Shermer speaks with Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, scholar, and former politician, Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her new book Prey. She explains why so many young Muslim men who arrive in Europe

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01:43:06

155. Martin Sherwin — Gambling with Armageddon:...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/02/02

In episode 155, Dr. Shermer speaks with Martin Sherwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, about his new book Gambling with Armageddon, the definitive history of the Cuban Missile Crisis and its potential for nuclear holocaust, in a wider historical narrative of the Cold War — how such a crisis arose, and why at the very last possible moment it didn’t happen. Luck, coupled to reason and diplomacy, saved the world from

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01:59:02

154. David Sloan Wilson — Atlas Hugged: The...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/01/26

In episode 154, Michael speaks with renowned evolutionary theorist David Sloan Wilson about his new novel Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III, a devastating critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and its impact on the world. Shermer and Wilson discuss: the role of fiction and film in spreading ideas, good and bad; empirical/pragmatic/mythic truths; individualism vs. collectivism; why liberals/progressives/feminists don‘t like Rand; the nature of human nature; how small groups

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01:46:31

153. Kevin Dutton — Black-and-White Thinking: The...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/01/19

In episode 153, Michael speaks with University of Oxford research psychologist Dr. Kevin Dutton about his new book Black-and-White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World. Shermer and Dutton discuss a wide gamut including black-and-white thinking in physics, biology, psychology, politics, economics, society; categories, stereotypes, bigotries; the dark side of black-and-white thinking: tribalism, xenophobia, and racism; abortion, gender, cults, sects, religions, mental disorders,

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21:54

152. Politics & Truth — Michael Shermer Responds to...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/01/17

Dr. Michael Shermer received a lot of interesting and constructive responses to episode 151, his commentary on the events of January 6, 2021 — the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. In episode 152, Shermer responds to critics, reminding us that the truth or falsity of a claim of any kind that can be adjudicated by science and reason applies not just to astrologers, psychics, UFO proponents, and Big Foot hunters (all of which we cover in Skeptic magazine), but to conspiracy theories,

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46:36

151. Trump & Truth — A Commentary by Michael Shermer

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/01/12

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire In this monologue commentary on the events of January 6, 2021, Dr. Shermer applies causal inference theory to Trump’s speech that morning, the violent assault on the Capitol that followed, the banning of Trump off social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the fears on the Right of social media censoriousness on the Left, the breaking up of big tech social media companies, and related topics, including

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01:30:11

150. Daniel Lieberman — Exercised: Why Something We...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2021/01/05

“Nothing about the biology of exercise makes sense except in the light of evolution, and nothing about exercise as a behavior makes sense except in the light of anthropology.” In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise — to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and

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43:35

149. The After Time: The Future of Civilization After...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2020/12/29

In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast, the last of 2020, Dr. Michael Shermer offers some reflections on 2020, starting with race and the Black Lives Movement, putting it into perspective from other books he read this year, along with podcast guests who appeared in 2020, such as Shelby Steele. Dr. Shermer recently read Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste and Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Anti-Racist, and offers some thoughts on them, along with other issues competing for our attention

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41:18

148. Have Archetype — Will Travel: The Jordan...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2020/12/22

In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast Dr. Michael Shermer reflects on the recent resurrection of Jordan Peterson, the resurgent criticism of him and why so many people attack him, why similar such unwarranted attacks have been made against public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris today, and of Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan in the past. Dr. Shermer then reads his essay of this title that was originally published in Skepticmagazine 23.3 (2018), and on skeptic.com,

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01:49:46

147. David Barash — On the Brink of Destruction

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2020/12/15

In a conversation based on the book Threats: Intimidation and its Discontents, Shermer and Barash discuss: 2020 as the most momentous year of the past half century, judging historical figures based on modern morals (e.g., race and slavery), whether humans are naturally gullible or skeptical, the evolutionary logic of deterrence, how animals deal with threats, how humans deal with threats, game theory of deterring threats, nuclear deterrence (Mutual Assured Destruction) as a threat strategy, the

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01:18:08

146. Donald Prothero — Weird Earth: Debunking Strange...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2020/12/08

Shermer and Prothero discuss: flat earth theories and how we know the earth is round, hollow earth theories and how we know it’s not hollow, the return of Ptolemy and an earth-centered solar system model (and how we know it’s wrong), how science deals with anomalies, fringe claims, and challenges to the orthodoxy, whether humans were in the San Diego area 130,000 years ago, how consensus is achieved in science (and the messy road to get there), from Newton to Einstein and what ultimately determines

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01:10:30

145. Greg Lukianoff — How Free is Free Speech?

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2020/12/01

In this wide ranging conversation focused on Greg Lukianoff’s co-authored (with Jonathan Haidt) book The Coddling of the American Mind, and his new documentary film Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story, about the free speech champion Ira Glassner, who headed the ACLU for decades, he and Shermer discuss: the state of free speech today, how coddled today’s students are, the data on rates of depression and anxiety in students today, possible causes of the coddling of the American mind: social media,

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01:40:25

144. Agustín Fuentes — Why We Believe: Evolution and...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2020/11/24

Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist

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608 results

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