The Michael Shermer Show

By Michael Shermer

Natural Sciences

What's The Michael Shermer Show about?

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.

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Ways of Thinking That Power...

09.19.2023

Shermer and Pompliano discuss: personal journey from college to Fortune to The Profile • what distinguishes the truly exceptional from the merely great • What is genius? • hindsight bias • David Goggins: Do something that sucks every single day ...

The Michael Shermer Show episodes:

09.19.2023 Ways of Thinking That Power Successful People Shermer and Pompliano discuss: personal journey from college to Fortune to The Profile • what distinguishes the truly exceptional from the merely great • What is genius? • hindsight bias • David Goggins: Do something that sucks every single day ...
09.12.2023 How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy Lee McIntyre is Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Simmons ...
09.05.2023 The Law vs. Separation of Church and State Shermer and Tabash discuss: the history of the relationship between church and state • the founding framers of the U.S. Constitution and their arguments for separating church and state • Madison and Jefferson • how most of the 13 colonies ...
09.01.2023 Based on DNA Testing, Only One Twin Was Granted U.S. Citizenship. Why? This episode is a conversation based on two of Nancy Segal’s books The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive and Gay Fathers, Twin Sons: the Citzenship Case that Captured the World. Shermer and Segal ...
08.29.2023 Evidence of Aliens? Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb Did Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb discover the remnants of an interstellar meteor in the form of spherules on the ocean floor? Could they be of alien origin? In today’s special edition of The Michael Shermer Show the guest, Harvard astrophysicist ...
08.22.2023 Slavery in the U.S. Analyzed by a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Lawyer and Historian (Ed Larson) New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? We have long ...
08.15.2023 Maybe "Good Enough" Is Actually Enough? When Perfectionism Backfires. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” —anonymous “Perfection is man’s ultimate illusion. It simply doesn’t exist in the universe. If you are a perfectionist, you are guarantee to be a loser in whatever you do.” —David ...
08.08.2023 Is a Human Life Worth $10 Million or Only $187,000? (Bjorn Lomborg) World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. Together with more than a hundred of the world’s top economists, Bjorn Lomborg has worked for years to identify the world’s best solutions. Based on 12 new, peer-reviewed papers, ...
08.01.2023 Why We Get Fooled From phishing scams to Ponzi schemes, fraudulent science to fake art, chess cheaters to crypto hucksters, and marketers to magicians, our world brims with deception. In Nobody’s Fool, psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris show us how to avoid being ...
07.25.2023 The Saad Truth About Happiness Everyone wants to be happy. The question “How can I be happy?” drives countless decisions across the world, and billions of dollars are spent on marketing a wide variety of answers to it. Increasing evidence shows, however, that unhappiness is ...
07.18.2023 Christopher Rufo Decodes Cultural Shifts in America In this conversation based on his new book, America’s Cultural Revolution, Christopher Rufo exposes the inner history of the intellectuals and militants who slowly and methodically captured America’s institutions. With profiles of Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, and Derrick ...
07.12.2023 The Truth About Martin Luther King Jr. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. — and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new ...
07.05.2023 An Outsider’s Perspective on American Culture Wars Right now, someone, somewhere is being cancelled. Off-the-cuff tweets or “harmless” office banter have the potential to wreck lives. The Left condemns the Right, and the bigotry of the old elites. The Right complains about brain-dead political correctness, and the ...
06.27.2023 Children and Politics According to conservative commentator Bethany Mandel, “the Left is waging an all-out battle on the American family, particularly the youngest members. If they can make our children miserable, lead them to question every building block of society, and rebuild their ...
06.20.2023 The Future of Medicine: What You Need to Know We are on the cusp of a major transformation in healthcare. Using information gleaned from our blood and genes and tapping into the data revolution made possible by AI, doctors can catch the onset of disease years before symptoms arise, ...
06.14.2023 Michael Shellenberger on UFO Whistleblowers Shermer and Shellenberger discuss: the original article in Debrief • the authors Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal • why this story was not covered by the New York Times or the Washington Post • whistleblower David Grusch and his claim ...
06.08.2023 Is the Government Hiding Aliens? A commentary on the latest UAP/UFO story about the whistleblower and the government UFO retrieval program. In this special episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer addresses the latest claims by a whistleblower that the U.S. government and its ...
06.06.2023 A Guide to Violence and Self-Defense. Shermer and Thornton discuss: aggression: passive, proactive, reactive, relational • moralistic punishment and the game theory analysis of the logic of violence • gun violence (homicide, suicide, accidents) • violence against women/children • male-on-male violence • alcohol, drugs, infidelity • ...
05.30.2023 Identity or Merit: What Matters More? (Heather Mac Donald) Shermer and Mac Donald discuss: race as America’s original sin • civil rights • equality vs. equity • disparate impact • overt racism vs. systemic racism • why Blacks make less money, own fewer and lower quality homes, work in ...
05.27.2023 Are We Risking Our Ability to Think? How humans transfer knowledge through time might affect our ability to think. With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at ...
05.25.2023 Quantum Computers Will Change Everything (Michio Kaku) The quantum computer, which harnesses the power and complexity of the atomic realm, promises to be every bit as revolutionary as the transistor and microchip once were. Its unprecedented gains in computing power herald advancements that could change every aspect ...
05.23.2023 What Happened to Women’s Rights? My guest today is Inga Thompson, one of the most decorated cyclists in American history. You might ask, besides being aware I’m something of a bike geek, why am I having a cyclist on the show? Well, we’re not here ...
05.18.2023 My Final Lecture: What I Learned About Living a Good Life In the final minutes of the final lecture of Dr. Shermer’s final semester at Chapman a student asked what practical lessons for life he might share with them. Dr. Shermer offered as much as he could think of off the ...
05.16.2023 Could the American Economy Collapse Like Venezuela’s? (Mark Skousen) Shermer and Skousen discuss: whether economics is politicized • Adam Smith and what he really said • how the economy really works • fiat money vs. gold standard money • inflation and what to do about it • experimental economics ...
05.13.2023 Scams and Frauds: A Skeptic's Survival Guide Have you ever wondered why Bernie Madoff thought he could brazenly steal his clients’ money? Or why investors were so easily duped by Elizabeth Holmes? Or how courageous people like Jeffrey Wigand are willing to become whistleblowers and put their ...
05.09.2023 What if You Were Born 50 Years Earlier? The United States is currently home to six generations of people. With her clear-eyed and insightful voice, Twenge explores what the Silents and Boomers want out of the rest of their lives; how Gen X-ers are facing middle age; the ...
05.06.2023 How Can God Feel So Real? How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people — as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t ...
05.04.2023 Will We Ever Live in a Post-race World? In this special episode of the podcast, Michael Shermer talks about: why race still matters why race shouldn’t matter racism BLM (Black Lives Matter), CRT (Critical Race Theory), DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Anti-bias training the Implicit Association Test and ...
05.02.2023 346. Kennon Sheldon — What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About Free Will, Determinism, and Self-Determinism It’s become fashionable to argue that free will is a fiction: that we humans are in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases and only think that we are choosing freely. In Freely Determined, research psychologist Kennon Sheldon argues ...
04.29.2023 345. Matt Johnson — How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today’s left, he’s remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in ...
04.26.2023 344. What is a Woman, Anyway? In this special episode of the Michael Shermer Show Dr. Shermer comments on current events surrounding trans matters and reads his in-depth essay on the subject, originally published as one of his regularly Skeptic columns on Substack.
04.25.2023 343. Timothy Redmond — Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political ...
04.22.2023 342. Valerie Fridland — Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English Paranoid about the “ums” and “uhs” that pepper your presentations? Bewildered by “hella” or the meteoric rise of “so”? Can the word “dude” help people bond across social divides? Why are we always trying to make our intensifiers ever more ...
04.18.2023 341. Secret Scientists & Real Conspiracies — John Lisle on Stanley Lovell, the OSS precursor to the CIA, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the ...
04.15.2023 340. Ben Alderson-Day — Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience ...
04.11.2023 339. Gerald and Patricia Posner on Evil Shermer and the Posners discuss: the nature and banality of evil • Are we all potential Nazis? • Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler, Hitler • The Pharmacist of Auschwitz • the Holocaust • the Stanford Prison Experiment • Milgram’s shock experiments on ...
04.08.2023 338. AI SciFi — Physicist, Science Fiction Author, and AI Expert David Brin on ChatGPT and Whether AI Poses an Existential Threat Shermer and Brin discuss: AI and AGI • are they existential threats? • the alignment problem • Large Language Models • ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5, and beyond • the Future of Life Institute’s Open Letter calling for a pause on “giant ...
04.01.2023 337. On the Origin of Time — Thomas Hertog on Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. In order to solve this mystery, Hawking studied the Big Bang origin of the ...
03.28.2023 336. The Sacred Depths of Nature — Ursula Goodenough on How to Find Sacred Scientific Spirituality For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent ...
03.25.2023 335. Jennifer Michael Hecht on How to Find Meaning, Purpose, and Happiness in Everyday Life We have calendars to mark time, communal spaces to bring us together, bells to signal hours of contemplation, oﬃcial archives to record legacies, the wisdom of sages read aloud, weekly, to map out the right way to live ― in ...
03.21.2023 334. The End of the World: Bart Ehrman on What the Bible Really Says About the End You’ll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us ...
03.18.2023 333. Kevin Kelly — ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Excellent Advice for Living On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, Kelly had more to say than he thought, ...
03.14.2023 332. Wrongfully Convicted, Ultimately Acquitted — Amanda Knox on Criminal Injustice and Why It Happens Amanda Knox spent four years in an Italian prison for a crime she did not commit. In the fall of 2007, the 20-year-old college coed left Seattle to study abroad in Italy, but her life was shattered when her roommate ...
03.11.2023 331. Paul Zak — Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness The world is rapidly transforming into an experience economy as people increasingly crave extraordinary experiences. Experience designers, marketers, entertainment producers, and retailers have long sought to fill this craving. Paul Zak says there’s a scientific formula to consistently create extraordinary ...
03.07.2023 330. Jim Davies — How to Be a Better Person Why do we feel like in order to be productive, happy, or good, we must sacrifice everything else? Is it possible to feel all three at once? Without even knowing it, we’re doing things everyday to sabotage ourselves and our ...
03.04.2023 329. Marc Schulz — The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness Shermer and Schulz discuss: an operational definition of the “good life” or “happiness” or “well being” • the reliability (or unreliability) of self-report data in social science • relative roles of genes, environment, hard work, and luck in how lives ...
02.28.2023 328. Paul Bloom — Psych: The Story of the Human Mind How does the brain — a three-pound gelatinous mass — give rise to intelligence and conscious experience? Was Freud right that we are all plagued by forbidden sexual desires? What is the function of emotions such as disgust, gratitude, and ...
02.25.2023 327. Rachel Moran on Her Years in Prostitution, How She Got Out of It, and Why She Thinks It Is a Form of Sexual Exploitation Shermer and Moran discuss: her dysfunctional family background • her boyfriend who pimped her • the women who sell sex and the men who buy it • why other prostitutes have attacked her • agency and volition in prostitution: women ...
02.21.2023 326. Naomi Oreskes — The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market Shermer and Oreskes discuss: the myth of market magic • market fundamentalism • market absolutism • market essentialism • capitalism and democracy • well-regulated vs. poorly regulated capitalism • U.S. Constitution and capitalism • what the founding fathers believed about ...
02.18.2023 325. Heinrich Päs — The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics Shermer and Päs discuss: monism vs. dualism • What is time? • What is a field? • Is math all there is? Is math universal? • the double-slit experiment • superposition • metaphors in science • limitations of models and ...

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