Podcast Episodes
Back to Search344. What is a Woman, Anyway?
Episode 344
In this special episode of the Michael Shermer Show Dr. Shermer comments on current events surrounding trans matters and reads his in-depth essay on …
3 years, 4 months ago
343. Timothy Redmond — Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It
Episode 343
The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United Sta…
3 years, 4 months ago
342. Valerie Fridland — Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English
Episode 342
Paranoid about the "ums" and "uhs" that pepper your presentations? Bewildered by "hella" or the meteoric rise of "so"? Can the word "dude" help peopl…
3 years, 4 months ago
341. Secret Scientists & Real Conspiracies — John Lisle on Stanley Lovell, the OSS precursor to the CIA, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare
Episode 341
In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, …
3 years, 4 months ago
340. Ben Alderson-Day — Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other
Episode 340
Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist's journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or s…
3 years, 4 months ago
339. Gerald and Patricia Posner on Evil
Episode 339
Shermer and the Posners discuss: the nature and banality of evil • Are we all potential Nazis? • Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler, Hitler • The Pharmacist …
3 years, 4 months ago
338. AI SciFi — Physicist, Science Fiction Author, and AI Expert David Brin on ChatGPT and Whether AI Poses an Existential Threat
Episode 338
Shermer and Brin discuss: AI and AGI • are they existential threats? • the alignment problem • Large Language Models • ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5, and bey…
3 years, 5 months ago
337. On the Origin of Time — Thomas Hertog on Stephen Hawking's Final Theory
Episode 337
Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectl…
3 years, 5 months ago
336. The Sacred Depths of Nature — Ursula Goodenough on How to Find Sacred Scientific Spirituality
Episode 336
For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence tha…
3 years, 5 months ago
335. Jennifer Michael Hecht on How to Find Meaning, Purpose, and Happiness in Everyday Life
Episode 335
We have calendars to mark time, communal spaces to bring us together, bells to signal hours of contemplation, official archives to record legacies, the…
3 years, 5 months ago