The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
300 episodes
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.
Episodes page 1 of 6
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Why Consciousness Needs a Body
Why does being alive feel like something? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio argues that the answer begins with the body's need to stay alive. Hunger, thirst, pain, and pleasure tell us how we're doing and push us to act.…
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Racism and White Guilt: Has America Changed More Than We Admit? | Shelby Steele & Eli Steele
Can fighting racism end up reinforcing it? Shelby Steele grew up under segregation and became a Black militant in the 1960s. Today, he argues that White guilt has created a different racial problem: treating Black…
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Would You Want to Know If You Were Wrong?
What do you make of an experience you can't explain? A strange light in the sky, a book flying off a desk, a coincidence that feels too improbable to be chance? Social psychologist Barry Markovsky joins Michael Shermer…
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Does Consciousness Break the Laws of Physics?
If we could explain everything happening in your brain, would there still be something left to explain about you? Physicist Avshalom Elitzur thinks so—and argues that accounting for consciousness may require changing…
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Jared Diamond: How Much Can One Person Change History?
Would World War II have happened without Hitler? Would someone else have built Apple without Steve Jobs? Jared Diamond joins Michael Shermer to ask how much history depends on particular people. From Darwin's…
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Why America Failed to Stop 9/11 | Gerald Posner & Michael Shermer
How did 19 hijackers evade the world's most advanced intelligence apparatus despite years of warnings? Twenty-five years after 9/11, journalist Gerald Posner joins Michael Shermer to explain the security failures that…
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Why Be Honest When Cheating Pays?
Most of us think of ourselves as honest. But would we still tell the truth if lying got us what we wanted—and nobody would ever find out? Philosopher Christian Miller joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book The…
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Is the Future Unknowable? Uncertainty, Free Will, and the Limits of Science
What if uncertainty isn't a temporary problem science will eventually solve, but a fundamental feature of reality? Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein joins Michael Shermer to make the case that the universe may be far…
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Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven't Found Them
UFOs were once the stuff of tabloids and conspiracy theories. Today they're the subject of congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations, mainstream news coverage, and a new wave of claims about government cover-ups…
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Is There a Second Arrow of Time? A New Law of Evolution, Information, and Complexity
Why does the universe produce ever more elaborate forms, from atoms and minerals to cells, organisms, brains, technology, and civilization? The familiar laws of physics can explain much of what happens in nature, but…
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Why Good People Disagree About Right and Wrong
Why do reasonable people disagree so strongly about right and wrong? And why are we so quick to assume that people on the other side of a moral or political issue are irrational, selfish, ignorant, or simply bad?…
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Are We Building a God? AI, Superintelligence, and the Coming Singularity
Robert Wright joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, and why he thinks the AI revolution may be moving much faster than most people…
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Can You Trust Wikipedia? Co-Founder Larry Sanger on Wikipedia's Bias and Why He Was Banned
Michael Shermer speaks with Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger shortly after Sanger was permanently banned from editing the site he helped create. Sanger tells the story of Wikipedia's founding, how its ideal of open…
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How to Think Clearly About a World in Crisis: Iran, China, Russia, and the West's Economic Pessimism
Michael Shermer speaks with political scientist Marlene Laruelle about Russia's turbulent transformation during the 1990s and the rise of Vladimir Putin, why the Kremlin so badly misjudged Ukraine, China's rise and its…
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The Truth About Sex Differences (Steve Stewart-Williams)
How do men and women differ? Where do the differences come from? And how do they shape modern life? Drawing on a century of research and a billion years of evolution, Steve Stewart-Williams explains why many sex…
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America at 250: What Did the Founders Get Right?
Michael Shermer makes the case that the U.S. Founding Fathers were not only steeped in Enlightenment values on which the Declaration of Independence was based, but they were also scientists searching to discover moral…
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When History Goes on Trial: Demjanjuk, Eichmann, and Justice After Atrocity
John Demjanjuk lived for decades as a retired autoworker in suburban Cleveland. Then investigators accused him of being "Ivan the Terrible," one of the most notorious guards at Treblinka. What followed was one of the…
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Why I Joined the Government UAP Science Advisory Council
Michael Shermer has been appointed to the newly formed UAP Science Advisory Council, formed at the request of the White House and in coordination with the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Office of the…
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Massimo Pigliucci on Doubt, Moral Courage, and Living Without Illusions
What does it mean to live well when certainty is unavailable? Michael Shermer speaks with Massimo Pigliucci about moral character, ancient philosophy, and the difficult art of making decisions without easy answers.…
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Cathy Young: Why Free Societies Need Free Speech
Cathy Young returns to the show for a wide-ranging conversation about free speech, institutional trust, and the strange incentives shaping public debate today. What happens when universities, media outlets, political…
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The Zodiac Killer Wasn't Real
The Zodiac Killer has been treated for decades as America's ultimate unsolved true crime mystery: one mysterious killer, taunting letters, cryptic ciphers, a strange costume, and a trail of victims across Northern…
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How Algorithms Use Your Data to Control You
Michael Shermer speaks with Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz about the long human desire to know the future—from ancient oracles and astrology to AI, surveillance capitalism, predictive policing, and "data-driven"…
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Batya Ungar-Sargon: Why the Left Sees Jews Differently Now
Batya Ungar-Sargon joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about the historical relationship between Jews and the American left, and why that relationship has become increasingly strained in recent years.…
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From Equality to Equity: How Social Justice Becomes Ideology
Jon Mills, a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist, joins Michael Shermer to discuss how social justice ideology has moved from a concern with fairness and equal treatment into a rigid moral framework…
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Can Science Fix Criminal Justice?
America's criminal justice debate usually gets reduced to two options: abolish the system or lock everyone up forever. Economist Jennifer Doleac thinks the data point somewhere else entirely. In this episode, Michael…
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Gad Saad: When Empathy Becomes Dangerous
Gad Saad returns to discuss his new book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, a provocative argument that empathy is not a moral trump card. Empathy can illuminate suffering, but it can also distort judgment when it is…
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Why We Cling to Certainty, Conspiracies, and Bad Predictions
We like to think the future can be figured out if we just gather enough information. Pick the right expert, read the right forecast, find the right framework, and the fog will lift. Simone Stolzoff argues that this…
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on UFOs, Government Files, and the Physics of Alien Claims
Neil deGrasse Tyson returns to The Michael Shermer Show to talk UFOs, aliens, government files, eyewitness testimony, and his new book Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter. The…
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From Newspapers to Influencers: Who Controls Reality Now? (Ashley Rindsberg)
Journalist and author Ashley Rindsberg returns to The Michael Shermer Show for a wide-ranging conversation about the new media world: influencers with audiences larger than cable networks, conspiracy theories built for…
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The New War on Free Speech: Why Power Turns Everyone Into a Censor
Free speech was supposed to be the great settled achievement of liberal democracy. Then came social media, cancel culture, campus speech battles, hate-speech laws, authoritarian tech control, and a new era of…
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The UFO Files Were Declassified Today
The long-promised UFO files have finally been released. In this solo commentary, Michael Shermer examines the newly declassified documents, photographs, videos, eyewitness accounts, redactions, and government claims…
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Why Everything Falls Apart—And How to Keep It Going (Stewart Brand)
Stewart Brand has spent a lifetime thinking about tools, systems, civilization, and the long future. Best known as the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, Brand joins Michael…
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The Scientist Who Tried to Prove Reincarnation
Can memories survive death? It sounds like the kind of question skeptics usually dismiss before the conversation even starts. But Ian Stevenson was not a carnival psychic or a late-night ghost hunter. He was a…
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Why Do We Exist? Hakeem Oluseyi
Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi has lived a life that sounds almost impossible: a childhood marked by poverty, violence, and constant upheaval; a teenage obsession with Einstein; a stint in the Navy; addiction and…
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Shermer Says 9: The "Dead Scientists," Explained
A viral story is spreading across media: a mysterious string of scientists connected to UFOs, nuclear weapons, aerospace, and defense work have disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances. Politicians are…
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Not Monsters. Not Madmen. Just Men.
What kind of person helps build a regime like the Third Reich? A monster? A madman? Or something far more unsettling? Michael Shermer sits down with author Jack El-Hai to talk about the true story behind Nuremberg. At…
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Flourishing in the Age of Algorithms
What actually makes a life feel meaningful? In this conversation, Daniel Coyle joins Michael Shermer to talk about why fulfillment rarely comes from optimization, status, or trying to "win" at everything. Instead, it…
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What Really Prevents Cognitive Decline
What actually causes cognitive decline, and how much of it can we do something about? In this episode, Michael talks with neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Majid Fotuhi about dementia, Alzheimer's, memory loss, and…
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How Christianity Made America—and How America Remade Christianity
Why does religion still dominate American politics when so many other wealthy democracies secularized long ago? In this episode, Michael Shermer talks with historian Matthew Avery Sutton about the long relationship…
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What Turns Sand Into Cells? How Nonliving Matter Becomes Alive
How does something living emerge from something that isn't? In this episode, Lee Cronin pushes the question back even further: before cells, before DNA, before biology as we usually think of it, what kind of process…
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Shermer Says 8: Easter Without the Miracle
On Easter Sunday, Michael asks whether the resurrection should be understood as history, myth, or something deeper.
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Debra Soh on Why Men and Women Are Drifting Apart, Dating Apps, and Gen Z
Fewer people are having sex, fewer are forming lasting relationships, and many feel more isolated than ever. Why? Michael Shermer sits down with neuroscientist and author Debra Soh to discuss her new book Sextinction:…
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The Psychology of Gaslighting, Bullying, Cults, and Coercion
What do gaslighting, bullying, cults, and coercion have in common? In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with Jennifer Fraser about the psychology and neuroscience of manipulation, the recurring structure of abuse…
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Did Jesus Really Change Western Morality? Bart Ehrman
How much of what we call "basic morality" is actually inherited from Christianity? Bart Ehrman joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the biggest moral questions in history: why do we feel…
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Lionel Shriver on Immigration, Religion, and the Decline of the West
Michael Shermer sits down with novelist and essayist Lionel Shriver for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens when old political labels stop making sense. Shriver reflects on the strange moral and political…
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The Biggest Blind Spot of the Climate Movement: Nuclear Energy
Zion Lights used to be deep inside the environmental movement: protests, arrests, road blockades, the whole thing. Then she started looking closely at the evidence around nuclear power and found that much of what she'd…
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DOGE, Government Fraud, and AI Audits
Jeremy Jones joins Michael Shermer to talk about DOGE AI, government fraud, and the strange reality that some of the biggest problems in public life are both widely known and somehow never fixed. Jones explains how his…
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Heretics: The Scientists Who Were Mocked But Later Proven Right
Why do some world-changing ideas get ignored, attacked, or buried for years before anyone takes them seriously? Michael Shermer sits down with The Economist science correspondent Matt Kaplan to discuss the scientists…
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Shermer Says 7: Responding to Fan Mail … "Who Was Jesus?"
Michael Shermer responds to a remarkable letter from a group of eighth graders at a Christian school in Texas who say they've been praying for him and want to talk about Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible.
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Why the Same Childhood Doesn't Affect Everyone the Same Way
For decades, developmental psychologist Jay Belsky has focused on one of the biggest questions in human development: how do early experiences shape the lives we go on to live? In this conversation with Michael…
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