Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchIs the Future Unknowable? Uncertainty, Free Will, and the Limits of Science
Episode 631
What if uncertainty isn't a temporary problem science will eventually solve, but a fundamental feature of reality? Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jo…
4 hours ago
Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven't Found Them
Episode 630
UFOs were once the stuff of tabloids and conspiracy theories. Today they're the subject of congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations, mainstrea…
1 week ago
Is There a Second Arrow of Time? A New Law of Evolution, Information, and Complexity
Episode 629
Why does the universe produce ever more elaborate forms, from atoms and minerals to cells, organisms, brains, technology, and civilization? The famil…
2 weeks ago
Why Good People Disagree About Right and Wrong
Episode 628
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 moral or po…
3 weeks ago
Are We Building a God? AI, Superintelligence, and the Coming Singularity
Episode 627
Robert Wright joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, and why he thinks…
3 weeks, 6 days ago
Can You Trust Wikipedia? Co-Founder Larry Sanger on Wikipedia's Bias and Why He Was Banned
Episode 626
Michael Shermer speaks with Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger shortly after Sanger was permanently banned from editing the site he helped create.
San…
1 month ago
How to Think Clearly About a World in Crisis: Iran, China, Russia, and the West's Economic Pessimism
Episode 625
Michael Shermer speaks with political scientist Marlene Laruelle about Russia's turbulent transformation during the 1990s and the rise of Vladimir Pu…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
The Truth About Sex Differences (Steve Stewart-Williams)
Episode 624
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 billion ye…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
America at 250: What Did the Founders Get Right?
Episode 623
Michael Shermer makes the case that the U.S. Founding Fathers were not only steeped in Enlightenment values on which the Declaration of Independence …
1 month, 3 weeks ago
When History Goes on Trial: Demjanjuk, Eichmann, and Justice After Atrocity
Episode 622
John Demjanjuk lived for decades as a retired autoworker in suburban Cleveland. Then investigators accused him of being "Ivan the Terrible," one of t…
2 months ago