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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 governments pressuring platform
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 surrounding UFOs and UAP
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 Shermer to discuss his
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 respected psychiatrist at the
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 recovery; work as a janitor;
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 calling it a possible nation
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 the center is Dr. Doug
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 grows out of connection
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 the everyday habits that
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 between Christianity and
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 could make matter start
Shermer Says 8: Easter Without the Miracle
On Easter Sunday, Michael asks whether the resurrection should be understood as history, myth, or something deeper.
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: The Decline of Sex and
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 cultures, and the way au
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 obligated to care for s
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 confusions that now shap
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 been told about energ
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 team uses AI to sort
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 who got there first and
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.
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 Shermer, he explains why child
Who Gets to Edit Culture? Sensitivity Readers & Censorship in Book Publishing
Publishing likes to imagine itself as a marketplace of ideas with a strong immune system: good arguments win, bad ones fade, and editors act as principled gatekeepers. In practice, it's also an industry with thin margins, status anxiety, an
Filming Corey Feldman & "Corey's Angels": The Weird World Behind the Curtain
Documentary filmmaker Marcie Hume (BBC alum; Magicians: Life in the Impossible) joins Michael Shermer to talk about her new verité film Corey Feldman vs. the World—shot over a decade, starting in the "Corey's Angels" era and following a tou
Can a Skeptic Believe in God?
Christopher Beha grew up Catholic in Manhattan, walked away during the New Atheist era, and spent years trying to build a secular worldview sturdy enough to live inside. It didn't hold. So he kept reading—Hume, Kant, Russell, the existentia
Shermer Says 6: Jeffrey Epstein and Me
Michael Shermer recounts the moment he discovered his name in the Jeffrey Epstein files and uses it as a jumping-off point to tell a few unforgettable stories about con men he's encountered over the years, and how their tactics work.
The Evolutionary Roots of Love, Sex, and Jealousy
Why do people risk everything for love but treat sex like it's no big deal? Why is intimacy the most expensive thing in a brothel? And why do jealousy, infidelity, and heartbreak push otherwise rational people into behavior they later can't
Truth Still Matters (And Here's Why)
In this episode, Michael Shermer walks through the core ideas behind his new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, breaking down how humans confuse meaning with reality, stories with facts, and confidence with co
Shermer Says 5: What Went Wrong in Minnesota? Protests, Panic, and Personal Responsibility
In this solo episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael Shermer responds to the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old healthcare worker who was killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis during protests over enforcement of immig
Government Transparency & UFOs: Inside Military Programs and Classified Briefings
Michael Shermer sits down with attorney and bestselling author Kent Heckenlively for a tense, thoughtful, and surprisingly cordial conversation about UFOs, government secrecy, and the idea of "catastrophic disclosure." Heckenlively argues t
The Hardest UFO Cases to Dismiss: Something Is Flying Around and We Don't Know What It Is
In this episode, Michael Shermer talks with filmmaker James Fox, whose work has helped push UFOs, now often called UAPs, out of the tabloid shadows and into congressional hearings, radar logs, and sworn testimony. Fox has spent three decade
