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 Ame...
Feb 20, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 158
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 adva...
Feb 16, 2021•2 hr 2 min•Ep. 157
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...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 156
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 the...
Feb 02, 2021•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 155
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 gr...
Jan 26, 2021•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 154
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 disorde...
Jan 19, 2021•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 153
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, in...
Jan 17, 2021•22 min•Ep. 152
“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, includin...
Jan 12, 2021•47 min•Ep. 151
“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 exper...
Jan 05, 2021•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 150
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 attenti...
Dec 29, 2020•44 min•Ep. 149
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 Skeptic magazine 23.3 (2018), and on skeptic.com...
Dec 22, 2020•41 min•Ep. 148
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...
Dec 15, 2020•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 147
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 determi...
Dec 08, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 146
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 medi...
Dec 01, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 145
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 A...
Nov 24, 2020•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 144
Apollo’s Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, bestselling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague — an experience ...
Nov 17, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 143
Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something “extra,” beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some even suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved. Decades have been spent trying to explain consciousness from within our current scie...
Nov 09, 2020•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 142
The provocative thesis of Break It Up is simple: The United States has never lived up to its name—and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn’t limited to the South or the 19 th century. It was there at our founding and has never gone away. Investigative journalist Richard Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of ...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 141
The common narrative of Neanderthals is that they were a group of dullard losers whose extinction 40,000 years ago was due to smarter competition and a little of interbreeding with our own forebears. Likening someone to a Neanderthal was and, most likely, still is a top-rate anthropological insult. But, in the past few decades, Neanderthal finds have greatly contradicted our perception of the species. In Kindred , Rebecca Wragg Sykes combs through the avalanche of scientific discoveries of the s...
Oct 27, 2020•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 140
This classic lecture on skepticism was given by James Randi on March 22, 1992 at the inaugural session of the Distinguished Science Lecture Series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society in California (1992–2015). The transcript for this lecture appeared in Skeptic magazine 1.1 (1992). James Randi presents an amazing first-hand analysis of astonishing claims encountered in his European visit. New-found freedoms stimulate rampant pseudoscientific practices in eastern bloc ...
Oct 25, 2020•1 hr 33 min
The United States today is hopelessly polarized; the political Right and Left have hardened into rigid and deeply antagonistic camps, preventing any sort of progress. Amid the bickering and inertia, the promise of the 1960s—when we came together as a nation to fight for equality and universal justice—remains unfulfilled. As Shelby Steele reveals in Shame , the roots of this impasse can be traced back to that decade of protest, when in the act of uncovering and dismantling our national hypocrisie...
Oct 20, 2020•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 139
In this special episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer catches up with Douglas Murray one year after the publication of his bestselling book The Madness of Crowds , which was featured in Science Salon # 87 in October 2019. Murray’s book is now out in paperback with an Afterword update on all that has happened the past year, one of the most momentous in living memory. Shermer and Murray discuss: why he wasn’t “cancelled” after The Madness of Crowd s was published and became a bests...
Oct 16, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 138
From the day her daughter was born, science journalist Marta Zaraska fretted about what she and her family were eating. She fasted, considered adopting the keto diet, and ran a half-marathon. She bought goji berries and chia seeds and ate organic food. But then her research brought her to read countless scientific papers and to interview dozens of experts in various fields of study, including molecular biochemistry, epidemiology and neuroscience. What Marta discovered shattered her long-held bel...
Oct 13, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 137
There’s a war against truth and if we don’t win it, intellectual freedom will be a casualty. The West’s commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism has never been more seriously threatened than it is today by the stifling forces of political correctness. Dr. Gad Saad exposes the bad ideas—what he calls “idea pathogens”—that are killing common sense and rational debate. Incubated in our universities and spread through the tyranny of political correctness, these ideas are endangering our mo...
Oct 06, 2020•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 136
Does the universe have a speed limit? If not, some effects could happen at the same instant as the actions that caused them — and some effects, ludicrously, might even happen before their causes. By one hundred years ago, it seemed clear that the speed of light was the fastest possible speed. Causality was safe. And then quantum mechanics happened, introducing spooky connections that seemed to circumvent the law of cause and effect. Inspired by the new physics, psychologist Carl Jung and physici...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 135
WEIRD : Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves — their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations — over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolut...
Sep 22, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 134
In this sweeping psychological history of human goodness — from the foundations of evolution to the modern political and social challenges humanity is now facing — psychologist Michael McCullough answers a fundamental question: How did humans, a species of self-centered apes, come to care about others? Ever since Darwin, scientists have tried to answer this question using evolutionary theory. McCullough shows why they have failed and offers a new explanation instead. From the moment nomadic huma...
Sep 15, 2020•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 133
One of the most influential physicists of our time, Stephen Hawking touched the lives of millions. Recalling his nearly two decades as Hawking’s collaborator and friend, Leonard Mlodinow brings this complex man into focus in a unique and deeply personal portrayal. We meet Hawking the genius, who employed his mind to uncover the mysteries of the universe — ultimately formulating a pathbreaking theory of black holes that reignited the discipline of cosmology and paved the way for physicists to inv...
Sep 08, 2020•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 132
Science is how we understand the world. Yet failures in peer review and mistakes in statistics have rendered a shocking number of scientific studies useless — or, worse, badly misleading. Such errors have distorted our knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, physics, nutrition, education, genetics, economics, and the search for extraterrestrial life. As Science Fictions makes clear, the current system of research funding and publication not only fails to safeguard us from blunders but a...
Sep 01, 2020•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 131
Is our gender something we’re born with, or are we conditioned by society? In The End of Gender , neuroscientist and sexologist Dr. Debra Soh uses a research-based approach to address this hot-button topic, unmasking popular misconceptions about the nature vs. nurture debate and exploring what it means to be a woman or a man in today’s society. Shermer and Soh discuss: If you are transitioning to a different gender, but the word “gender” is largely meaningless biologically, then what are you tra...
Aug 25, 2020•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 130
