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...
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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 640 episodesWhy 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...
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 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, c...
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 astrolo...
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 lef...
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 f...
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 Do...