The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer
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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.

  1. -1 J

    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 against us. In his new book How to Not Know, he makes the case for getting better at uncertainty—not as a slogan, and not as an excuse to believe nothing, but as a practical skill: knowing when to act without perfect information, when to distrust easy answers, when to revise your beliefs, and when uncertainty might point toward something worth discovering. The conversation covers why people cling to conspiracy theories, what cults offer that ordinary life does not, why experts are so bad at predicting the future, how the replication crisis changed psychology, what relationships teach us about irreversible choices, and why the unknown is not only frightening, but also where possibility begins. Simone Stolzoff is a San Francisco–based journalist and author. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and on the TED stage. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. His debut book, The Good Enough Job, has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His new book is How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That Demands Answers.

    1 h 2 min

  2. -4 J

    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 limits of eyewitness testimony to why secret military files are not evidence of hidden alien bodies, why high-G turns would turn biological pilots into "a pile of goo," why the universe almost certainly contains life elsewhere, and why the real question is not whether aliens exist—but whether anyone has actually produced one. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, where he has served since 1996. Dr. Tyson is also the host and cofounder of the Emmy-nominated popular podcast StarTalk and its spinoff StarTalk Sports Edition, which combine science, humor, and pop culture. He is a recipient of twenty-three honorary doctorates, the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and the Distinguished Public Service Medal from NASA. Asteroid 13123 Tyson is named in his honor. His new book is Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter.

    1 h 15 min

  3. -6 J

    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 collapse of trust that followed COVID, censorship, and years of institutional overreach. Ashley Rindsberg is an investigative journalist and author focused on digital information platforms. He is the founder and editor of NPOV, which looks at how knowledge platforms like Wikipedia are used to distort information and seed damaging narratives online. He is the author of The Gray Lady Winked, an expose on The New York Times, and serves as Editor-at-Large at Pirate Wires, a leading tech, politics, and culture outlet.

    1 h 18 min

  4. 11 MAI

    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 platforms from every direction. Michael Shermer speaks with free speech scholar Jacob Mchangama about why speech protections are weakening around the world—not only in dictatorships, but inside democracies. Their conversation moves from the First Amendment and January 6 to hate speech laws in Europe, Section 230, Elon Musk and X, online anonymity, social media bans for minors, and the enormous promise and danger of AI. Mchangama argues that censorship is less a left-wing or right-wing impulse than a human one: once people gain power, the urge to silence enemies becomes almost irresistible. The real test of free speech is not whether we defend ideas we like, but whether we resist using state power against speech we despise. Jacob Mchangama is the founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. His new book is The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom.

    1 h 19 min

  5. 8 MAI

    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 UAPs.

    31 min

  6. 5 MAI

    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 new book, Maintenance of Everything, a sweeping look at what it takes to keep bodies, machines, buildings, institutions, planets, and civilizations from falling apart. The conversation ranges from the hidden work of maintenance to electric vehicles, bicycles, nuclear power, AI, and even human populations. Brand makes the case that life itself is maintenance: everything alive must keep itself going, and everything humans build must be repaired, improved, updated, and cared for. Stewart Brand is the cofounder and president of The Long Now Foundation and cofounder of Global Business Network, the Hackers Conference, and the WELL. He created and edited the National Book Award-winning Whole Earth Catalog from 1968 to 1998. He was the subject of the documentary We Are As Gods (2020). He graduated from Stanford with a degree in biology and served as an infantry officer in the US Army. His new book is Maintenance of Everything.

    1 h 4 min

  7. 2 MAI

    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 University of Virginia who spent decades investigating children who claimed to remember previous lives, along with cases involving birthmarks, apparitions, telepathy, and other alleged evidence for life after death. In this episode, psychologist and science writer Jesse Bering talks about Stevenson's strange and fascinating career, the psychology of afterlife belief, why the mind so easily imagines consciousness continuing after death, and what to do with cases that are hard to explain but far from proven. Jesse Bering is a science writer, research psychologist, and head of the Science Communication program at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the author of several books, including: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? And Other Reflections on Being Human and Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves. His new book is The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson: One Scientist's Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Other Matters of the Soul.

    1 h 39 min

  8. 28 AVR.

    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; and eventually a PhD in physics from Stanford. In this conversation, Michael Shermer and Oluseyi talk about his new book, Why Do We Exist?, and the biggest questions science can ask: what came before the Big Bang, whether the multiverse is real, why the universe seems fine-tuned for life, what dark matter and dark energy really mean, and why alien civilizations may be far rarer than we hope. Hakeem Oluseyi is a multidisciplinary astrophysicist, multi-patented inventor, award-winning author and journalist, and internationally recognized educator. His new book is Why Do We Exist?: The Nine Realms of Universe That Make You Possible.

    1 h 11 min
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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.

Informations

  • Création
    Michael Shermer
  • Années d’activité
    2018 - 2026
  • Épisodes
    619
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © The Skeptics Society. All rights reserved.
  • Site web de l’émission
    The Michael Shermer Show

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