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...
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The Michael Shermer Show
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 im...
Episodes
20 of 646 episodesWhy 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. H...
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 argue...
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 impr...
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...
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...
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, journal...
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? Ph...
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 Fir...
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,...
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?...
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 mo...
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...
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 cr...
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 Vl...
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 b...
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 Inde...
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,"...
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 coordin...
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 p...