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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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How Much Credit Do You Deserve for Your Life?
We tend to explain success by looking at what people did right, while overlooking everyone who made the same choices and failed. Philosopher Duncan Pritchard joins Michael Shermer to discuss his book, Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to
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. These basic feelings,
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 Americans as permanent vic
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 to discuss his new bo
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 the laws of physics. In
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 discoveries to the rise of Chri
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 left America vulnerabl
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 Honesty Crisis and the
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 less deterministic—and th
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 and alien technology.
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 Robert Hazen and Michae
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? Michael Shermer speaks with
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 realize. Wright argues that d
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 collaboration hardened i
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 ambitions regarding T
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 differences appear despite s
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 truths and values on w
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 strangest and most trou
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 Director of National I
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. The conversation moves fr
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 movements, and online p
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 California. Eddie McNamara
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" decision-making. Véliz arg
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. The discussion begins
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 built around oppressors
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 Shermer speaks with Dol
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 treated as an unquesti
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 impulse often works again
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 conversation moves from the limit
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 engagement, and the c
