The Michael Shermer Show

I’ve followed Shermer for almost two decades, and his work has been invaluable We live in an increasingly irrational and anti-reason world. What we need now, more than ever, are tempered voices for enlightenment and anti-superstition.

OK, I like Shermer’s show, even though it needs an editor, often runs far too long, in spite of the abrupt interruptions. I do like to open my mind past my initial prejudices and assumptions and to drain some of the skewing emotion out of the cognitive brew. The guests are often impressive and interesting. But there is a certain smugness in his delivery. A certain self-satisfied superiority. The rest of us simians are just a little too alarmist and captive to our priors while he is the ultra-rationalist and oh so superior. His take on the Trump re-election (which is an unmitigated disaster for the country) is a case in point. We’ll soon see how much there is to truly be upset about. I hope when it comes to pass, Shermer will admit he was oh so wrong. Sometimes intuition and emotion serve us well as a species. And we do have plenty of hard evidence to justify the alarm —past indefensible actions and statements ungoverned by reason or good advice this time. Buckle up, America.

It seems that Shermer is now someone masquerading as a skeptic as he latches onto far right tropes and fear mongering. I can only assume this is to try and appeal to a larger audience but for someone looking for a reasonable and fact based look at the world, this ain’t it. I keep waiting for an episode with a good interview but instead keep getting Shermers monologues on how Trumps just such a good candidate and how trans women are bad. It won’t be long before he’s another far right pseudoscience con artist.

Michael Schermer is a real twerp. Some of his guests are quite interesting.