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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

01:31:24

Who Gets to Edit Culture? Sensitivity Readers &...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/02/26

Publishing likes to imagine itself as a marketplace of ideas with a strong immune system: good arguments win, bad ones fade, and editors act as principled gatekeepers. In practice, it's also an industry with thin margins, status anxiety, and a constant fear of reputational damage. Adam Szetela argues that a lot of what gets called "cancel culture" in books is better understood as risk management under social media conditions. Outrage compresses timelines, collapses context, and turns interpretation

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01:32:36

Filming Corey Feldman & "Corey's Angels": The Weird...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/02/21

Documentary filmmaker Marcie Hume (BBC alum; Magicians: Life in the Impossible) joins Michael Shermer to talk about her new verité film Corey Feldman vs. the World—shot over a decade, starting in the "Corey's Angels" era and following a tour that unravels in real time. It goes to some uncomfortable places: how celebrity can create cult-ish dynamics (not just with fans, but with the people working around them as well), how "truth" becomes a slogan—used to frame criticism as persecution and to keep

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01:16:37

Can a Skeptic Believe in God?

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/02/15

Christopher Beha grew up Catholic in Manhattan, walked away during the New Atheist era, and spent years trying to build a secular worldview sturdy enough to live inside. It didn't hold. So he kept reading—Hume, Kant, Russell, the existentialists—and kept chasing the questions that don't let you sleep: what counts as evidence, what belief even is, and what you do when reason can't answer the things you still have to decide. In this conversation with Michael Shermer, Beha makes a case that skepticism

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15:12

Shermer Says 6: Jeffrey Epstein and Me

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/02/07

Michael Shermer recounts the moment he discovered his name in the Jeffrey Epstein files and uses it as a jumping-off point to tell a few unforgettable stories about con men he's encountered over the years, and how their tactics work.

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01:33:01

The Evolutionary Roots of Love, Sex, and Jealousy

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/02/03

Why do people risk everything for love but treat sex like it's no big deal? Why is intimacy the most expensive thing in a brothel? And why do jealousy, infidelity, and heartbreak push otherwise rational people into behavior they later can't explain? Evolutionary biologist and sex researcher Justin Garcia, executive director of the Kinsey Institute and author of The Intimate Animal, joins Michael Shermer for a candid conversation about the biology of sex, the evolutionary logic of pair bonding, and

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55:42

Truth Still Matters (And Here's Why)

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/27

In this episode, Michael Shermer walks through the core ideas behind his new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, breaking down how humans confuse meaning with reality, stories with facts, and confidence with correctness. He also explains why changing your mind is a strength, not a flaw; why extraordinary claims really do require extraordinary evidence; and why "just asking questions" isn't as innocent as it sounds. BUY THE BOOK Amazon Shop Skeptic (autographed)

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28:07

Shermer Says 5: What Went Wrong in Minnesota?...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/26

In this solo episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael Shermer responds to the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old healthcare worker who was killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis during protests over enforcement of immigration law. As political debate intensifies, Shermer asks a tough question that most discussions are avoiding: What role does personal responsibility play in emotionally charged, high-risk situations? He separates the facts we can reasonably assert from what

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01:10:40

Government Transparency & UFOs: Inside Military...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/21

Michael Shermer sits down with attorney and bestselling author Kent Heckenlively for a tense, thoughtful, and surprisingly cordial conversation about UFOs, government secrecy, and the idea of "catastrophic disclosure." Heckenlively argues that something real is being hidden. Not necessarily aliens, but information powerful enough to disrupt energy markets, military spending, and political authority. But beyond stories and secondhand testimony, where is the kind of evidence that would settle the

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01:24:11

The Hardest UFO Cases to Dismiss: Something Is Flying...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/18

In this episode, Michael Shermer talks with filmmaker James Fox, whose work has helped push UFOs, now often called UAPs, out of the tabloid shadows and into congressional hearings, radar logs, and sworn testimony. Fox has spent three decades interviewing fighter pilots, radar operators, intelligence officials, scientists, and firsthand witnesses. His conclusion is not that we know what these objects are, but that dismissing them no longer works. Around 90 to 95 percent of sightings collapse under

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01:21:50

Why Survival Isn't Enough: The Deep Human Need to Matter

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/14

What if the deepest human drive isn't happiness, survival, or even love, but the need to matter? Philosopher and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein joins Michael Shermer to discuss The Mattering Instinct, her argument that the desire to feel significant lies at the core of human behavior. That drive helps explain our greatest achievements, from creativity and moral courage to scientific and artistic excellence. It also helps explain some of our darkest outcomes, including extremism,

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52:29

Shermer Says 4: Venezuela, ICE in Minnesota, UFOs &...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/12

In this unscripted solo episode, Michael Shermer reflects on a dizzying start to the year and what it reveals about truth, power, and public judgment. From events in Venezuela and the limits of exporting democracy to a viral Planet Fitness controversy, the Minneapolis ICE shooting, and renewed claims about aliens, Shermer keeps returning to the same question: What actually helps, and what only feels like a good idea in the moment?

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01:29:34

Mental Health: More Diagnoses, Fewer Answers?

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/10

What if the way we approach mental health is quietly making things worse? Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sami Timimi joins Michael Shermer to examine some of the core assumptions behind modern psychiatry. Why have diagnoses such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression expanded so dramatically—and why hasn't increased access to treatment led to better outcomes at the population level? Timimi describes how diagnostic categories have broadened over time and questions whether psychiatric labels

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01:50:20

What Makes You "You" When Everything Is Just Atoms?

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/06

What is consciousness, really? Why does it not simply switch on at a single moment? Neuroscientist Niko Kukushkin explains how even single cells can show primitive forms of memory and agency, why the human mind is not a mysterious force floating above biology, and why reducing it to "just neurons" misses what actually matters. He also discusses the evolutionary gamble of complexity, why bacteria still dominate the planet, and how abstraction and memory together give rise to thought. At the center of

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01:21:54

Rethinking the Discovery of DNA

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2026/01/03

Francis Crick is best known as one of the figures behind the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but the familiar story leaves out as much as it explains. Historian of science Matthew Cobb looks closely at how Crick's life actually unfolded, revealing a career shaped less by inevitability than by luck, conflict, false starts, and a series of highly contingent moments. The double helix itself may have been waiting to be found, but what followed was anything but predetermined. Crick's

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01:05:15

How One Black Man Dismantled the KKK, One...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2025/12/30

What do you do when someone believes you shouldn't exist? Daryl Davis didn't protest. He didn't shout. He sat down, asked questions, and kept showing up. Over decades, that approach has led more than 200 Ku Klux Klan members and white supremacists to walk away from their robes for good. In this conversation, Davis explains why people radicalize, and what happens psychologically when prejudice collides with a real human being. He shares stories from inside Klan meetings, lessons learned from

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01:30:00

The Collapse of Open Inquiry: Sacred Victims and...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2025/12/28

Open inquiry depends on the ability to ask uncomfortable questions and follow evidence wherever it leads. Eric Kaufmann argues that this norm is now under strain. Drawing on history, survey data, and political theory, Kaufmann outlines how certain identity categories came to be treated as morally sacred—and how that shift has reshaped debates about equality, free speech, and academic inquiry. The conversation examines the long roots of today's culture conflicts, the move from equal opportunity to

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01:00:21

The Future of Brain Implants: Restoring Speech,...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2025/12/23

Brain-computer interfaces are moving out of the lab and into real medical use. In this episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael Shermer talks with Dr. Matt Angle, founder and CEO of Paradromics, a neurotechnology company developing one of the most advanced high-data-rate brain implants in the world, similar to Neuralink. These devices record activity from individual neurons, making it possible to restore speech in people with paralysis, reconnect the brain to external devices, and potentially

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01:26:06

The Original Alien Craze: When People Believed in...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2025/12/20

At the turn of the 20th century, millions of Americans, including elite scientists, major newspapers, and cultural icons, were convinced that Mars was home to an advanced civilization. In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with award-winning science journalist David Baron about one of the most astonishing episodes in scientific-cultural history. Blurry telescopes, mistranslated words, and persuasive personalities transformed speculation into accepted fact, while more cautious scientists struggled

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02:07:33

How AI Sees Science Differently Than We Do

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2025/12/16

What if the great discoveries of science came in the "wrong" order? The Laws of Thermodynamics were discovered well after the creation of algebra, classical physics, and chemistry, but are perhaps much more important to our basic understanding of the universe. Chris Edwards argues that AI will be able to understand science outside of the traditional chronological developments of the sciences, unlocking entirely new potentials and perspectives on the universe. If human scholars are to understand how

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01:14:10

Can You Spot a Killer? The Dangerous Fantasy of...

The Michael Shermer Show ·

2025/12/13

Criminal profiling promises certainty in the face of horror: this is what a killer looks like, this is how they think, this is how we stop them. But what if that promise is mostly an illusion? In this episode, Michael Shermer is joined by journalist and author Rachel Corbett to dismantle the myths behind criminal profiling, from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit to our obsession with serial killers, mindhunters, and "psychological fingerprints." Corbett explains why randomness is harder to accept

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