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 ideals of Millennials as parents and in the workplace; and how Gen Z has been changed by COVID, among other fascinating topics. Shermer and Twenge discuss: untangling interacting causal variables (age, gender, race, religion, politics, SES, big events, slow trends, tim...
May 09, 2023•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 349
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 easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real , acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion Tanya M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real. Does this effort help explain the enduring pow...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 348
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 if it measures unconscious racism race and IQ and why such group differences are environmental and not genetic how we can achieve a post-race world....
May 04, 2023•42 min•Ep. 347
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 that this perception is not only wrong but also dangerous. Shermer and Sheldon discuss: definitions of free will, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will • dualism • reductionism, materialism, predetermination, and epiphenomenalism • Christian L...
May 02, 2023•1 hr 27 min
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 Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left , Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free i...
Apr 29, 2023•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 345
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.
Apr 26, 2023•37 min•Ep. 344
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 information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes. Shermer and Redmond discuss: why we have political duopoly (Duverger’s law) • pa...
Apr 25, 2023•2 hr 3 min•Ep. 343
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 intense? Are these language tics, habits, and developments in our speech a sign of cultural and linguistic degeneration? Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how tha...
Apr 22, 2023•2 hr 2 min•Ep. 342
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 man who had summoned him. Lovell became the head of a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Their inventions included bat bombs, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, and camouflaged explosives. Moreover, the...
Apr 18, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 341
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 is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined,...
Apr 15, 2023•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 340
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 obedience to authority • Abu Ghraib and other war crimes • restorative justice • the opioid crisis • the Vatican and the future of Catholicism. Gerald Posner is an award-winning journalist who has written twelve books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist...
Apr 11, 2023•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 339
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 AI experiments” • Asilomar AI principles • Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Time OpEd: “Shut it All Down” • laws and ethics. David Brin earned a Bachelor’s degree in astronomy from Caltech, a Master’s in electrical engineering from UC San Diego, and a PhD in astronomy from UC San Dieg...
Apr 08, 2023•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 338
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 universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs producing a multiverse — countless different universes, most of which would be far too bizarre to harbor life. Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambrid...
Apr 01, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 337
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 biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. Shermer and Goodenough discuss: origins of her personal beliefs • origins life, RNA, DNA, consciousness, languag...
Mar 28, 2023•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 336
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 kindness, justice, morality. These rhythms and structures of society were all once set by religion. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show. So how then to celebrate milestones? Find rules to guide us? Figure out which texts can focus our attention but still offer spac...
Mar 25, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 335
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 all. But whether you understand the book as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture, what you think Rev...
Mar 21, 2023•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 334
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, and kept adding to the advice over the years, compiling a life’s wisdom into the pages of his book: Excellent Advice for Living . Shermer and Kelly discuss: protopian progress • ChatGPT • artificial intelligence; an existential threat? • evolution • cultural progress • self-driving car...
Mar 18, 2023•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 333
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 was murdered in their apartment. After a controversial trial, Amanda was convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, an appeals court overturned the decision and vacated the murder charge. Free at last, she returned home to the U.S., where she remained silent until she released the memoir...
Mar 14, 2023•57 min•Ep. 332
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 experiences, and that the data show that those who use this formula increase the impact of experiences tenfold. Shermer and Zak discuss: neuroeconomics, neuromanagement, and neuromarketing • Z...
Mar 11, 2023•1 hr 49 min•Ep. 331
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 societies, habits that prevent us from optimizing long term happiness. Where most books imagine solutions that, when enacted, fail to fundamentally improve our lives, Jim Davies grounds his research in cognitive science to show you not only what works, but how much it works. ...
Mar 07, 2023•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 330
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 turn out • personality and to what extent it can be scientifically measured and studied • factors in early childhood that shape mental health in mid and late life • generational differences: • the impact of loneliness • misconceptions about happine...
Mar 04, 2023•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 329
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 shame? Renowned psychologist Paul Bloom answers these questions and many more in Psych , his riveting new book about the science of the mind. Shermer and Bloom discuss: neuroscience • human nature • religion • souls • consciousness • Freud • sex and desire • Sk...
Feb 28, 2023•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 328
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 and men • why “prostituted” as something done to women (instead of choosing it)? • what she thought about when having prostituted sex • drugs, depression, and suicide as responses to prostitution • the myths of prostitution • feminism and prostitution • how she got out o...
Feb 25, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 327
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 markets • what Adam Smith really said about markets and capitalism and how economists rewrote Adam Smith • why markets need regulation in the same way sports need rules and referees • rhetorical fallacies of market fundamental...
Feb 21, 2023•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 326
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 theories of reality • limitations of analogies between western physics and eastern mysticism • What banged the Big Bang? • Are we living in a matrix? • the Second Laws of Thermodynamics and directionality in nature • Model Dependent Realism • string theory, the multiverse, consciou...
Feb 18, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 325
Shermer and Gold discuss: diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media • social justice movements and their motivations • bias in STEM fields • why people believe weird things • exorcisms • UFOs • faith healers • Derren Brown and how magic works on minds • hypnosis • sex and where to have an affair • Ashley Madison • female/male differences in sexual preferences and choices • non-offending pedophiles in Berlin • the curious case of Jimmy Seville: why didn’t anyone notice his pedophilia? Andrew ...
Feb 14, 2023•2 hr 16 min•Ep. 324
Shermer and Hardy discuss: Hardy’s religious journey (raised Catholic, now agnostic) • origin of Pentecostalism and its biblical basis Pentecostalism in Korea North and South, and Israel • the structure of the Pentecostal church and how it differs from other churches • Seven Mountain Mandate • how religions grow • pentecostalism and politics • the psychology of the believer • dispensationalism and the Rapture • prophecy • glossolalia • snake handling • eschatology and end-times theology • sin an...
Feb 11, 2023•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 323
Shermer and Klein discuss: sex therapist and the reasons people seek therapy • self-help sex books • sexual orientation • asexuality • sex abuse • infidelity • monogamy • polyamory • trans • homosexuality • sex education • the case against the sexual revolution • sex addiction • pornography • the anti-pornography movement • prostitution • obscenity and censorship • pedophilia. Marty Klein has been a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and a Certified Sex Therapist in Palo Alto, California f...
Feb 07, 2023•2 hr 33 min•Ep. 322
Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs. In For Profit , law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn’t have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them. C...
Feb 04, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 321
In this episode Michael Shermer speaks with the stoic philosopher and evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci on how to apply the ancient wisdom of stoicism to our personal lives and to our society. Shermer and Pigluicci discuss: his journey from Rome to New York • evolutionary biology • stoic philosophy • can there be a science of meaning and morality? • ultimate questions • desire, action, depression, suicide, anger, anxiety, love, and friendship • practical spiritual exercises • how to react...
Jan 31, 2023•2 hr 7 min•Ep. 320
