The Michael Shermer Show

Shermer and Hardy discuss: Hardy's religious journey (raised Catholic, now agnostic) • origin of Pentecostalism and its biblical basis Pentecostalism in Korea North and South, and Israel • the structure of the Pentecostal church and how it differs from other churches • Seven Mountain Mandate • how religions grow • pentecostalism and politics • the psychology of the believer • dispensationalism and the Rapture • prophecy • glossolalia • snake handling • eschatology and end-times theology • sin and redemption • prostitution • Jordan Peterson and secular religion. Elle Hardy is a journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported from the United States, the former USSR and North Korea, among a long list of places. Her work has appeared in GQ, Lonely Planet, Foreign Policy and Business Insider, and on ABC Australia. Her new book is Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World.

Shermer and Klein discuss: sex therapist and the reasons people seek therapy • self-help sex books • sexual orientation • asexuality • sex abuse • infidelity • monogamy • polyamory • trans • homosexuality • sex education • the case against the sexual revolution • sex addiction • pornography • the anti-pornography movement • prostitution • obscenity and censorship • pedophilia. Marty Klein has been a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and a Certified Sex Therapist in Palo Alto, California for 42 years — over 40,000 sessions with individuals and couples. Marty is the author of seven books on sexuality, including Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex and How to Get it; His Porn, Her Pain: Confronting America's PornPanic with Honest Talk about Sex; Beyond Orgasm: Dare to be Honest About the Sex you Really Want; Ask Me Anything: Dr. Klein Answers the Sex Questions You'd Love to Ask; and America's War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty. Marty is an outspoken critic of many popular and clinical ideas about sexuality and emotional health. Wikipedia cites him as the foremost critic of the concept of sex addiction. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Porn Studies. And each year Marty gives expert testimony in various state and federal courts. A former instructor at Stanford Medical School, Marty's humor, insights, and down-to-earth approach are regularly featured in the national media, such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, Nightline, NPR, and the Huffington Post.

Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs. In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn't have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them. Corporations enabled everything from the construction of ancient Rome's roads and aqueducts to the artistic flourishing of the Renaissance to the rise of the middle class in the twentieth century. By recapturing this original spirit of civic virtue, Magnuson argues, corporations can help craft a society in which all of us — not just shareholders — benefit from the profits of enterprise. Shermer and Magnuson discuss: corporations and what they are for • LLCs • Roman corporations • medieval economics • banks • guilds • Credit Mobilier scandal • Dutch and British East India Companies • stocks, bonds, joint stock companies • monopolies, duopolies • assembly lines • multinationals • raiders • private equity firms • start-ups • antitrust, trustbusting • bankruptcy • bitcoin, cryptocurrency • Adam Smith's critique of corporations • profit and market efficiency • slavery and economics • unions. William Magnuson is an associate professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches corporate law. Previously, he taught law at Harvard University. The author of Blockchain Democracy, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg. He lives in Austin, Texas.

In this episode Michael Shermer speaks with the stoic philosopher and evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci on how to apply the ancient wisdom of stoicism to our personal lives and to our society. Shermer and Pigluicci discuss: his journey from Rome to New York • evolutionary biology • stoic philosophy • can there be a science of meaning and morality? • ultimate questions • desire, action, depression, suicide, anger, anxiety, love, and friendship • practical spiritual exercises • how to react to situations • teaching virtue to politicians • philosophy and politics • character and leadership • the nature of evil. Massimo Pigliucci is the K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. The author or editor of sixteen books, he has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Salon, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. His books include: Making Sense of Evolution; Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk; Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem; Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life; A Field Guide to a Happy Life; A Handbook for New Stoics; How to Be a Stoic; The Quest for Character.

In this conversation, based on a leading cult expert Steven Hassan's books (Combatting Cult Mind Control, Freedom of Mind, and The Cult of Trump) you will acquire the tools you need to develop, use, and trust your critical thinking skills; your intuition; your bodily and emotional awareness; your ability to ask the right questions; and your skill at doing quick, useful research. You will also learn to create a healthy balance of openness and skepticism. Shermer and Hassan discuss: types of cults, their characteristics • cult leader profiles • the influence continuum • mind control • brainwashing • Project MK-ULTRA • Scientology • NXIVM • strip search hoax • social media mind control • neuroscience of mind control • authoritarian mindset • Trump's mind-control techniques • breaking free of cults. Steven Hassan is a mental health professional who specializes in helping people to recover from mind control as well as helping loved ones to exit without coercion. He has been helping people leave destructive relationships and organizations since 1976 after he was rescued from the infamous cult, the Moonies. Hassan directs the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, a counseling and publishing organization outside of Boston, and has taught at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is the author of Combating Cult Mind Control; Releasing the Bonds; Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs; and The Cult of Trump.

Physics has always sought to deepen our understanding of the nature of matter and the world around us. But how do you conduct experiments with the fundamental building blocks of existence? How do you manipulate a particle a trillion times smaller than a grain of sand? How do you cause a proton to sail around a twenty-seven-kilometer-long loop 11,000 times per second? And, crucially, why is all this important? In The Matter of Everything, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged the experiments that changed the course of history. Shermer and Sheehy discuss: what it's like being a female physicist in a mostly male field • Does science progress through falsification, confirmation, consensus, or Bayesian reasoning? • atoms, light, Higgs Boson, time, gravity, dark energy, dark matter, string theory, radioactivity • Gold Foil Experiment • cloud chambers • particle accelerators • splitting the atom • Is there a place for God in scientific epistemology? • Is math all there is? Is math universal? • other universes, dimensions, and the multiverse. Suzie Sheehy is a physicist, science communicator and academic who divides her time between research groups at the University of Oxford and University of Melbourne. She is currently focused on developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. The Matter of Everything is her first book.

Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? In this conversation based on his new book Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. Revealing new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday life leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature. And during a moment in which our world feels more divided than ever before, and more imperiled by crises of different kinds, we are greatly in need of awe. If we open our minds, it is awe that sharpens our reasoning and orients us toward big ideas and new insights, that cools our immune system's inflammation response and strengthens our bodies. It is awe that activates our inclination to share and create strong networks, to take actions that are good for the natural and social world around us. It is awe that transforms who we are, that inspires the creation of art, music, and religion. Aweis also a field guide for how to place awe as a vital force within our lives. Shermer and Keltner discuss: the death of his brother and how this led to his study of awe • an operational definition of awe • the reliability (or unreliability) of self-report data in social science • how to quantify and measure the experience of awe • What are emotions and how can they be measured? • How has the scientific understanding of emotions changed? • predictors of awe: nature, music, art, dance, movement/exercise, love & friendships • awe in moral beauty • how to train yourself to experience awe • how awe helps heal traumas, grief, and loneliness • mystical experiences, spirituality, and awe restorative justice and awe. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the faculty director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the science of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities and search for meaning. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of The Power Paradox and the bestselling book Born to Be Good, and the coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct. His new book is Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life.

Pacifists who fought against the Second World War faced insurmountable odds — but their resistance, philosophy, and strategies fostered a tradition of activism that shaped America right up to the present day. Daniel Akst's new book takes us into the wild, heady, and uncertain times of America on the brink of a world war, following four fascinating resisters — four figures who would subsequently become famous political thinkers and activists — and their daring exploits: David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin. Shermer and Akst discuss: war • the left (old and new) • religious liberals • American Firsters and Isolationists • cluster of heterodoxy: anti-war/militarism, but also anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid, anti-power of the state, pro-labor, pro the rights of minorities, individual liberty on matters such as abortion and gender, anti-segregation • internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps • civil disobedience (Thoreau, Garrison, Gandhi) • non-violent protests • moral equivalency • Just War Theory • Military Industrial Complex • moral progress with and without religion • the rise of Christian nationalism and authoritarianism. Daniel Akst is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate and other leading publications. He was a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, and has taught at Bard College and in the Bard Prison Initiative. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

Shermer and Bernstein discuss: the SCOTUS case on affirmative action and race preferences at Harvard and elsewhere • Elizabeth Warren (Cherokee ancestry — Bureau of Indian Affairs rejects?) • Tiger Woods: Cablinasian (European, African, Thai, Chinese ancestry) • George Zimmerman (Hispanic, half Hispanic, mixed-race, White Hispanic, White, or…?) • Rachel Dolezal (NAACP official, adopted an African American identity, though has none) • Kamala Harris (child of an Indian immigrant mother, father of mixed-African and European heritage from Jamaica) • BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) • ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) • the biology and legality of race • the one-drop rule of race classification • the rise of modern racial classification • Hispanic, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Armenian, Cajun, South Asian, Arab, and Iranian categories • American Indians/Native Americans • race classification and reparations • How can we achieve a race-blind society? David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William and Mary, Brooklyn Law School, and the University of Turin. Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as "intellectual history in its highest form," a "fresh perspective and a cogent analysis," "delightful and informative," "sharp and iconoclastic," "well-written and destined to be influential," and "a terrific work of historical revisionism." Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. Professor Bernstein is married and has three children of mixed Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Spanish-Jewish origin. He prefers not to classify them.

Shermer and Rees discuss: existential threats • overpopulation • biodiversity loss • climate change • AI and self-driving cars, robots, and unemployment • his bet with Steven Pinker • his disagreement with Richard Dawkins • how science works as a communal activity • scientific creativity • science communication • science education • why there aren't more women and people of color in STEM fields • verification vs. falsification • Bayesian reasoning and scientific progress • Model Dependent Realism and the nature of reality Fermi's Paradox • why he's an atheist but wants to be buried in the Presbyterian church in which he was raised • mysterian mysteries. Martin Rees is Astronomer Royal, former President of the Royal Society, Fellow (and former Master) of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He sits as a member of the UK House of Lords. He is the author of many bestselling popular science books, including: On the Future; Just Six Numbers; Before the Beginning; and Our Final Hour. His newest book is If Science is to Save Us.

Shermer and Cobb discuss: objections to genetic engineering (political, religious, cultural) • selective breeding • recombinant DNA • the ethics of genetics • patenting life • gene therapy • gene editing • CRISPR • literature and films on the dangers of genetic engineering • bioweapons • 3 Laws of Behavior Genetics and what people fear about it. Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of six books: The Idea of the Brain: A History; Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code; Generation; The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis; Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris in 1944; and Smell: A Very Short Introduction. He lives in England.

Ditching the stuffy hang-ups and benighted sexual traditionalism of the past is an unambiguously positive thing. The sexual revolution has liberated us to enjoy a heady mixture of erotic freedom and personal autonomy. Right? Wrong, argues Louise Perry in her provocative new book. Shermer and Perry discuss: What was the sexual revolution? • feminism: first wave, second wave, third wave, and beyond • the evolutionary psychology of sex differences • experiencing self vs. remembered self • individual freedom vs. societal good • monogamy vs. polygamy • marriage vs. domestic partnerships • Why is the government in the marriage business? • BDSM and sexual violence • autogynephilia • trans matters • abortion matters. Louise Perry is a writer, New Statesman columnist, and campaigner against male sexual violence. Her new book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, has sparked an international conversation about sex in the 21st century.

Shermer and Daum discuss: unauthorized autobiography • Feminism (first, second, third wave, and beyond) • Was the sexual revolution good or bad (or both) for women? • badassery, problematica, wokescenti, cognoscenti • Gen Xers • Elders • What is a woman? • Sex and Gender • who you identify as vs. who you're attracted to • Trans • #metoo and #BLM movements • intersectionality • toxic masculinity • wokeness, liberal vs. progressiveness, far left vs. left • cancel culture, and political tribalism. Meghan Daum is the author of six books, most recently The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars. Her collection of original essays, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, won the 2015 Pen Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. A Los Angeles Times opinion columnist from 2005 to 2016, Meghan has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Vogue. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has taught Columbia University in addition to teaching private workshops in personal essay, memoir and opinion writing. Meghan is the host of the weekly interview podcast, The Unspeakable and the cohost, with Sarah Haider, of the weekly podcast A Special Place in Hell. Meghan founded The Unspeakeasy, an intellectual community for freethinking women. Her current writings are on Substack.

For too long, the term insubordination has evoked negative feelings and mental images. But for ideas to evolve and societies to progress, it's vital to cultivate rebels who are committed to challenging conventional wisdom and improving on it. Change never comes easily. And most would-be rebels lack the skills to overcome hostile audiences who cling desperately to the way things are. Shermer and Kashdan discuss: how he became an insubordinate rebel in his unusual young life • the effects of a fatherless home on children • the influence of role models • how civil rights movements make progress • the adversarial court system • how juries should think • racialization in America • viewpoint diversity • resisting complacency • the value of non-conformity • influencing the majority (when in the minority) • how to build alliances • how to champion ideas that run counter to traditional thinking • how to unlock the benefits of being in a group of diverse people holding divergent views • how to cultivate curiosity, courage, and independent, critical thinking in youth. Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at George Mason University, and a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He has published more than 220 scientific articles, his work has been cited more than 35,000 times, and he received the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. His books Curious? and The Upside of Your Dark Side have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and other publications, and his research is featured regularly in media outlets such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Time. He's a twin with twin daughters (plus one more), with plans to rapidly populate the world with great conversationalists.

Shermer and Thusi discuss: how she gained access to police and sex workers in Johannesburg • what it was like patrolling brothels in Johannesburg • what sex work is, exactly (street-based, brothel-based, escort services, private, dance hall, and hotel sex work) • why sex workers are mostly women and patrons mostly men • why sex work is illegal in many places and whether it should be legal and regulated like any other trade • the liminal nature of sex work (mostly illegal, mostly goes on anyway, difficult to police) • Critical Race Theory • racism and antiracism • President Barack Obama • her response to Shelby Steele and Jason Hill's "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy • why we are not living in a post-racial society (yet) and why race matters (still). India Thusi is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law with a joint appointment at the Kinsey Institute. Her research examines racial and sexual hierarchies as they relate to policing, race, and gender. Her articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, Northwestern Law Review (twice), Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review Online, amongst others. She has worked at the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and — most recently — The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab that collaborates to effect lasting policy and culture change. She served as a federal law clerk to two social justice giants: the Honorable Robert L. Carter, who sat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and was the lead counsel for the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education; and the Honorable Damon J. Keith, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and is lauded for his prominent civil rights jurisprudence. She also clerked for Justice van der Westhuizen at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the country's highest court. She was recognized as a Top 40 Rising Young Lawyer by the American Bar Association in 2019. Her book is Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg.

The Blind Storyteller is an intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research. It grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so afraid of zombies, to whether dyslexia is "just in our heads," from what happens to us when we die, to why we are so infatuated with our brains. The end result is a startling new perspective on the age-old nature/nurture debate — and on what it means to be human. Shermer and Berent discuss: nature/nurture genes/environment biology/culture • language and innate knowledge • what babies are born knowing • how people reason about human nature • dualism • essentialism • theory of mind • the nature of the self • innate beliefs in the soul and afterlife • free will and determinism • how people think about mental illness and disorders • how one's theory of human nature effects one's attitudes about nearly everything. Iris Berent is a Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, Boston, and the Director of the Language and Mind Lab. Berent's research has examined how the mind works and how we think it does. She is the author of dozens of groundbreaking scientific publications and the recipient of numerous research grants. Her previous book, The Phonological Mind (Cambridge, 2013), was hailed by Steven Pinker as a "brilliant and fascinating analysis of how we produce and interpret sound."

Nicholas Dirks is a strong advocate for academic and scientific collaboration across disciplines and recently helped launch the International Science Reserve which compiles technical and human resources scientists to call upon in times of crisis. His work focuses on the critical issues at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences, including distrust of science and vaccine hesitancy. Shermer and Dirks discuss: vaccine hesitancy • why antibiotics do not generate the same distrust • vaccines and autism • COVID-19 and its differential effects on people • the lab-leak hypothesis vs. the zoonomic hypothesis for the origin of SARS CoV-2 • Anthony Fauci and the CDC • climate denial • how trust in science has changed over the past century • the politicization of science • how to talk to someone who doesn't trust science or scientists. Nicholas Dirks, President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), is an internationally renowned historian and anthropologist. He leads the Academy in promoting science-based solutions to world challenges, including pandemics and global warming. His work at the Academy facilitates the dissemination of scientific information, supports broad access to science education, studies counter bias in academia and the laboratory, and supports scientists across all stages of their careers. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has taught at UC Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. His website is nicholasbdirks.com.

In this important guide to science and society, cosmologist Stephon Alexander argues that physics must embrace the excluded, listen to the unheard, and be unafraid of being wrong. Drawing on his experience as a Black physicist, he makes a powerful case, in his latest book, for diversifying our scientific communities. Shermer and Alexander discuss: his journey from Trinidad to the Bronx to professor of physics • what it's like being Black in a mostly White and Asian field of science • systemic racism and misogyny • how to be an outsider inside a science • how to tell the difference between revolutionary and worthless new ideas • how do laypeople understand whether something is good science or not? • the double-slit experiment • superposition • connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism • creativity • What banged the Big Bang? • Are we living in a matrix? • Deepak Chopra's mind monism • consciousness and the universe. Stephon Alexander is a professor of theoretical physics at Brown University, an established jazz musician, and an immigrant from Trinidad who grew up in the Bronx. He is the 2020 president of the National Society of Black Physicists and a founding faculty Director of Brown University's Presidential Scholars program, which boosts underrepresented students. In addition to his academic achievements, he was the scientific consultant to Ava DuVernay for the feature film A Wrinkle in Time. His work has been featured by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and many other outlets. He has been a guest on Nova, the Brian Lehrer Show, and Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk, among much else. The author of Fear of a Black Universe and The Jazz of Physics, Alexander lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

A conversation with literary critic and publishing insider Bethanne Patrick about the future of books, book publishing, authors and readers. Shermer and Patrick discuss: her memoir Life B • trends in treatment of depression and other mental diseases • why memoirs by authors who have suffered traumas and stresses in their lives sell so well • non-fiction, fiction, and quasi-nonfictional fiction • censorship and cancel culture in publishing • why the New York Times bestseller list is so influential • the trial over the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House over whether it will lead to a monopsony • the future of publishing and book stores • how writing compares to more accessible forms of content such as film or podcasting • what advice she would give to new would-be authors. Bethanne Patrick is the ultimate literary insider. If you read book reviews, you undoubtedly know Bethanne. Her endorsements in venues like the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and the Boston Globe have moved hundreds of thousands of copies. Check your shelves: chances are you own a book (or three) with a Bethanne blurb on the cover. An influencer in the book world, Bethanne (@TheBookMaven) has over 200K Twitter followers and originated the popular #FridayReads hashtag. The author of two books for National Geographic and editor of an anthology for Regan Arts, Patrick's debut memoir Life B will be published by Counterpoint in May 2023.

All our unique gifts like language, math, and science do not make humans happier or more "successful" (evolutionarily speaking) than other species. Our intelligence allowed us to split the atom, but we've harnessed that knowledge to make machines of war. We are uniquely susceptible to bullshit; our bizarre obsession with lawns has contributed to the growing threat of climate change; we are sexually diverse like many species yet stand apart as homophobic; and discriminate among our own as if its natural, which it certainly is not. Is our intelligence more of a curse than a gift? Shermer and Gregg discuss: • intelligence • stupidity • dolphins • artificial intelligence • language • rationality • moral systems • comparative thanatology • "causal inference" vs. "learned associations" • humans as "why specialists" • death awareness • why narwhals do not commit genocide • "prognostic myopia" • our "shortsighted farsightedness" as "an extinction-level threat to humanity" • consciousness and sophisticated consciousness: animals and humans • free will • determinism • pleasure vs. happiness vs. purposefulness. Justin Gregg is a Senior Research Associate with the Dolphin Communication Project and an Adjunct Professor at St. Francis Xavier University where he lectures on animal behavior and cognition. Originally from Vermont, Justin studied the echolocation abilities of wild dolphins in Japan and The Bahamas. He currently lives in rural Nova Scotia where he writes about science and contemplates the inner lives of the crows that live near his home.

Michael Shermer discusses his new book Conspiracy, out October 25, 2022. In Conspiracy Shermer: reviews and integrates evolutionary, psychological, social, cultural, political, and economic conditions that fuel conspiracy theories presents his own original three-tiered theoretical model of Proxy Conspiracism, Tribal Conspiracism, and Constructive Conspiracism classifies and systematizes conspiracy theories in order to tease apart their different causes (incl. JFK's assassination, the 9/11 Truth movement, Pizzagate, QAnon, the Big Lie, Project MKULTRA, Operation Paperclip, and the perennial conspiracy theories surrounding UFOs) offers his Conspiracy Detection Kit on how to tell if a conspiracy theory is true, false, or undecidable and suggests how to talk to a conspiracy theorist. You can order your copy on Amazon (https://amzn.to/3Eza8Lf) and Audible (https://adbl.co/3eGXkaT) now.

Why does your weather app say "There's a 10% chance of rain" instead of "It will be sunny tomorrow"? In large part this is due to the insight of Tim Palmer, who made uncertainty essential to the study of weather and climate. Now he wants to apply it to how we study everything else. In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers, or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution—one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don't know. Shermer and Palmer discuss: doubt and skepticism • when doubt slides into denial • uncertainty as a measurement problem vs. inherent in natural systems • contingency and necessity, randomness and law • the butterfly effect • the geometry of chaos • quantum uncertainty • weather forecasting • climate change • pandemics • economic recessions • human decision making and creativity • free will • consciousness, and God. Tim Palmer, FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) is a Royal Society Research Professor in the department of physics at the University of Oxford. He pioneered the development of operational ensemble weather and climate forecasting, and in 2007, he was formally recognized as having contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Nobel Peace Prize. Palmer is a Commander of the British Empire, a fellow of the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Institute of Physics' Dirac Gold Medal. He lives near Oxford, UK.

Shermer and Blinder discuss: serving on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers • being the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board • What kind of science is economics? • how one's political leanings influence cause-and-effect economic theories • the difference between monetary and fiscal policy • a Keynesian approach to economics • inflation, stagflation, recessions, depressions, Bull and Bear markets defined • interest rates • the Federal Reserve • the money supply • What makes money valuable without the gold standard? • how the government can give billions of dollars in COVID relief and other programs • deficit spending • business cycles/boom-and-bust cycles • Reagonomics/trickle-down economics • Is GDP the best measure of an economy's success? • unemployment and full employment: what's the right percentage? • income tax: what's the right percentage? • the best investments to make in the long run • modern monetary theory, and • utility maximizing. Alan S. Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board, and a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. A regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal, he is the author of many books, including the New York Times bestseller After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey

Shermer and Ali discuss: • the search for structure in nature • order and randomness • economic laws • natural laws • natural orders: molecular, quantum, crystals, carbonic, nuclear, magnetic • hydrological, organismic, Gaia and Medea • reductionism and holism • Islamic economics • the origin of wealth • Is there an optimal economic order? • how mining rights work in the U.S. and elsewhere • the voter's paradox • Pareto optimality and why we can't achieve it • resource nationalism • the resource curse • why India and Pakistan have not used their nukes on each other • social orders • population and sustainability: neo-Malthusianism • How many people can the Earth hold? • why we need nuclear power for sustainability • internationalism and globalism • Trekonomics. Saleem H. Ali was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts but grew up in Lahore, Pakistan until his college years, receiving his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Tufts University, and his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in environmental policy and planning at Yale and MIT, respectively. He currently holds the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professorship in Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and is Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland (Australia). Dr. Ali's laurels include being a National Geographic Explorer (having travelled for research to over 150 countries); being chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and serving on the seven-member science panel of the Global Environment Facility (the world's largest multilateral trust fund for the environment held in trusteeship by the World Bank). His earlier books include Treasures of the Earth: Need Greed and a Sustainable Future. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Geographical Society in the United Kingdom and also serves on the boards of Adventure Scientists and Mediators Beyond Borders International. Along with his wife Maria and sons Shahmir and Shahroze, the family are citizens of Australia, Pakistan and the United States.

Shermer and Reeves discuss: • comparison method: U.S. vs. other WERID countries • education • work/labor market • family • marriage • Divorce/custody/spousal support/child support • intersectionality I: Black boys and men vs. White boys and men • intersectionality II: poor boys and men vs. middle class/upper class boys and men • What is a man? (nature and nurture in the making of a male) • what the political left gets wrong about boys and men • what the political right gets wrong about boys and men • solutions: red shirt boys early; men in STEM and HEAL • fatherhood as an independent institution Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Boys and Men Project and holds the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair. He is the author of Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It(2017) and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.

Shermer and Tyson discuss: why he decided to write about social, cultural, and political issues now • conflict and resolution in science and society • moral progress in society and why it happens • meatarians and vegetarians • race and gender • law and order • the principle of interchangeable perspectives • conflicting rights and how to resolve them • Rationalia (Neil's hypothetical country whose laws are based on rationality) • life and death • how long Neil would like to live • the meaning in life. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the author of the #1 bestselling Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, among other books. He is 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 21 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. He lives in New York City.

Shermer and Doyle discuss: terminology of: PC, identity politics, woken, social justice, antifa, BLM, TERF, intersectionality • Critical Social Justice as a witch craze • Satanic Panic (1980s) • Recovered Memory Movement (1990s) • How widespread is the problem: minor skirmishes on social media or mainstream? • Hill-Harris 2021 poll: 32% voters ID as woke and 31% said they don't know what the term means • new puritanism as a secular religion • Whiteness and White fragility • Implicit Association Test • Postmodernism • Neo-Marxism • Cancel Culture • hate speech • J.K. Rowling • pluralistic ignorance. Andrew Doyle is a writer, satirist and political commentator. He regularly appears on television to discuss current affairs, and is a panelist on the BBC's Moral Maze. He has written for a number of publications, including the Telegraph, Sun, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Standpoint, Spectator, and Sunday Times. He is the creator of satirical character Titania McGrath, under whose name he has written two books: Woke: A Guide to Social Justice and My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism, both published by Little, Brown. Titania McGrath has over half a million followers on Twitter. He was formerly a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast, and a lecturer at Oxford University where he completed his doctorate. His previous book was Free Speech and Why it Matters. His new book is The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World.

This conversation explores the never-before-told true story of Jane Elliott and the "Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment" she made world-famous, using eye color to simulate racism. Shermer and Bloom discuss: Jane Elliott and how she came to conduct her famous experiment • reactions to it (in the classroom, locally, nationally, internationally) • whether the "experiment" was really more of a demonstration • public interest, from Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey • the questionable ethics of the experiment • what it reveals about tribalism, racism, obedience to authority, role playing, social proof • whether the experiment reveals hidden racist attitudes or creates them in children • Does it indicate bad apples or bad barrels? • race sensitivity training programs, then and now (and why they don't really work) • what drives moral progress • the future of journalism. Stephen Bloom is a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality (University of California Press, 2021); The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery & Ruin in the City of Gold (Regan Arts, 2018); Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls (St. Martin's Press, 2011); The Oxford Project [with photographer Peter Feldstein] (Welcome Books, 2010); Inside the Writer's Mind (Wiley, 2002); and Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Harcourt, 2000). He has worked for the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, Latin America Daily Post, and Field News Service. He especially likes writing about every man/woman: the barista, bartender, baker, butcher, barber — or murderer-turned-prison employee.

Is it true that the world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate that would require two Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources by 2030? Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. They also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population. On average, every additional human being created more value than he or she consumed. Shermer, Tupy, and Pooley discuss: why we long for the "good ol' days" • Malthusian trap • Ehrlich's predictions on overpopulation • the birth dearth • the Simon Abundance Index • compound interest • What does it mean for the economy to grow 2–3% a year? • accumulating wealth • what poorer countries need to do to become richer countries • running out of fossil fuels • Obama's "you didn't build that" speech • inflation • electric vehicles • How many people can the Earth sustain? • post-scarcity trekonomics • the future of religion and other social institutions in a superabundant world. Marian Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and coauthor of the Simon Abundance Index. He specializes in globalization and global well-being and the politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa. He is the coauthor of Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting (Cato Institute, 2020). His articles have been published in the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Newsweek, the UK Spectator, Foreign Policy, and various other outlets in the United States and overseas. He has appeared on BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, and other channels. Tupy received his BA in international relations and classics from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his PhD in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Great Britain. Gale Pooley is an associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. He has taught economics and statistics at Alfaisal Univerity in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Brigham Young University-Idaho; Boise State University; and the College of Idaho. Pooley has held professional designations from the Appraisal Institute, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and the CCIM Institute. He has published articles in National Review, HumanProgress.org, The American Spectator, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Utah Bar Journal, the Appraisal Journal, Quillette, Forbes, and RealClearMarkets. His major research activity has been the Simon Abundance Index, which he coauthored with Marian Tupy.

What is time? Does the past still exist? How did the universe begin and how will it end? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Why doesn't anyone ever get younger? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? According to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate. Shermer and Hossenfelder also discuss: theories of everything • quantum flapdoodle • Is math all there is? Is math universal? • Uniformitarianism and the laws of nature • theories of aging • Emergent properties, or why we are not just a bag of atoms • Is knowledge predictable? • Free will and determinism from a physicist's perspective • Do copies of us exist? Could they ever? • Consciousness and computability • Does the universe think? • Why is there something rather than nothing? • What is the purpose of life, the universe, and everything? Sabine Hossenfelder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, and has published more than eighty research articles about the foundations of physics, including quantum gravity, physics beyond the standard model, dark matter, and quantum foundations. She has written about physics for a broad audience for 15 years and is the creator of the popular YouTube channel "Science without the Gobbledygook." Her writing has been published in New Scientist, Scientific American, the New York Times, and the Guardian (London). Her first book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, appeared in 2018.

Shermer and Kisin discuss: growing up in Russia • "The Talk" Russian parents give their children • What is the "West" and how do Russians view it • Should Whites feel some guilt for slavery, racism, misogyny, bigotry, etc.? • systemic racism: criminal justice, housing, employment, income, wealth • Critical Race Theory (CRT) • immigration • free, private, and public speech • how language is used to distort truth • the origin of "political correctness" • journalism vs. activism • capitalism • and how the West could be lost. Konstantin Kisin is a journalist, comedian, voiceover actor and social commentator. Born in the Soviet Union, where he experienced both untold wealth and grinding poverty, he moved to the UK when he was 13 years old. Now an award-winning performer, he co-presents the popular YouTube series Triggernometry alongside Francis Foster. Together, they've interviewed some of the most in-demand intellectuals of our age, such as Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson and many others.

Despite the hype surrounding AI, creating an intelligence that rivals or exceeds human levels is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules, and these approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. The real world, in contrast, is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Shermer and Marcus discuss: why AI chatbot LaMDA is not sentient • "mind", "thinking", and "consciousness", and how do molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes • the hard problem of consciousness • the self and other minds • How would we know if an AI system was sentient? • Can AI systems be conscious? • free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism • language • Can we have an inner life without language? • How rational or irrational an animal are we? Gary Marcus is a scientist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur. He is Founder and CEO of Robust.AI, and was Founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company acquired by Uber in 2016. He is the author of five books, including The Algebraic Mind, Kluge, The Birth of the Mind, and the New York Times best seller Guitar Zero, as well as editor of The Future of the Brain and The Norton Psychology Reader. He has published extensively in fields ranging from human and animal behavior to neuroscience, genetics, linguistics, evolutionary psychology and artificial intelligence, often in leading journals such as Science and Nature, and is perhaps the youngest Professor Emeritus at NYU. His newest book, co-authored with Ernest Davis, Rebooting AI: Building Machines We Can Trust aims to shake up the field of artificial intelligence. Check out our episode sponsors: Wren and Wondrium.

Shermer and Ashton discuss: what it's like advising Google and Buckingham Palace on how to communicate • what makes writing appealing and effective • how to write better emails and social media posts • why the messages we write often backfire • why emails so often make us angry • How has written communication changed in the last five years? • What makes Donald Trump such a powerful communicator that he can seemingly hypnotize tens of millions of people and dictate entire news cycles with a single statement? • when you should stop writing and pick up the phone to talk instead • How much information is too much? Rob Ashton is a writer, editor, and a former research scientist (a molecular biology researcher who helped develop the first tests for HIV). For the last six years, he's been on a quest to discover the science of how the words we read and write affect what we think and do. His experience includes 24 years advising some of the biggest names in commerce, such as Google, as well as working with national governments, charities and even the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace, all in an effort to help their people communicate more effectively in writing. He calls writing 'the invisible medium'. And he believes much of the misunderstanding in the world stems from our increasing reliance on our keyboards and phone screens to 'talk' to each other. But he says it's always frustrated him that so much of the communication advice on the web and pushed by consultants is based on a mixture of pseudoscience, hearsay and wishful thinking. Read more at: robashton.com/influence

Shermer and de Salcedo discuss: her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at age 27 • her long-term psychological strategy for living with a serious illness • what "eating like a pig" actually means • our 70-year-old "diet detour" • the obesity crisis • how dietary studies are conducted • the baseline health of lab rats • static vs. dynamic metabolism • diseases you can treat, manage, or prevent with exercise • cholesterol and statins • why exercise is more important than diet • how you can have your cake and eat it, too. Anastacia Marx de Salcedo is a food writer whose work has appeared in Salon, Slate, the Boston Globe, and Gourmet magazine and on PBS and NPR blogs. She's worked as a public health consultant, news magazine publisher, and public policy researcher. She is the author of Combat-Ready Kitchen and lives in Boston, MA.

This episode is sponsored by Wren. Signup at wren.co/shermer and Wren will plant 10 trees in your name. Start a monthly subscription to fund climate solutions. Shermer and Kirchick discuss: archives and secret sources of secret histories • the cause of homophobia, and how and why homosexuality was thought of as a "contagious sexual aberrancy" • why there is no lesbian history of Washington • J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson and gay mythmaking • FDR and Sumner Welles • why at the height of the Cold War, it was safer to be a Communist than a homosexual • Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss • the McCarthy hearings and how the Lavender Menace became inextricably linked with the Red Menace • astronomer Franklin Kameny and the Mattachine Society • JFK and his tolerance of homosexuality • Richard Nixon's notorious homophobia • Ronald Reagan's conflicting attitudes toward homosexuality • George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and real progress in acceptance of homosexuality • the trans movement and its homophobic consequences. James Kirchick has written about human rights, politics, and culture from around the world. A columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, he is the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. Kirchick's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. A graduate of Yale with degrees in history and political science, he resides in Washington, DC. This episode is also sponsored by Wondrium.

Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted. In her new book Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same — sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as males. This isn't your grandfather's (or Darwin's) evolutionary biology. It's more inclusive, and truer to life. Shermer and Cooke discuss: the definition of male and female across the animal kingdom • male bias in the history of science • genes involved in sex determination and how they work • natural selection • sexual selection • adaptationism vs. non-adaptationism in evolutionary theory • Why do men have nipples? • Why do women have orgasms? • why female animals are just as promiscuous, competitive, aggressive, dominant and dynamic as males • what humans can learn from non-human animals • maternal and paternal instincts • patriarchy and matriarchy across the animal kingdom • and why the sexes are far more alike than they are different. Lucy Cooke is the author of The Truth About Animals, which was short-listed for the Royal Society Prize, and the New York Times bestselling A Little Book of Sloth. She is a National Geographic explorer, TED talker, and award-winning documentary filmmaker with a master's degree in zoology from Oxford University. She lives in Hastings, England.

In this conversation based on his new book, The Romance of Reality, cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains how for centuries the question Why do we exist? was the sole province of religion and philosophy. According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and the emergence of life is an accident devoid of meaning. But Azarian argues that out of complexity science and the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature's simplest "parts" come together to form ever-greater "wholes" in a process that has no end in sight, and that life is moving toward increasing complexity and awareness. Carl Sagan was right when he said of humanity that "we are a way for the cosmos to know itself." Shermer and Azarian discuss: laws of thermodynamics and directionality • how complexity formed after the Big Bang • laws of nature: discovered or created or both? • Stephen Jay Gould and contingency vs. necessitating laws of nature • convergent evolution and directionality in evolution • the left wall of simplicity • leading theories for the origin of life • complexity theory and emergence • consciousness, the self, and other minds • free will, determinism, compatibilism, panpsychism • Is there purpose in the cosmos? Bobby Azarian is a cognitive neuroscientist (PhD, George Mason University) and a science journalist. He has written 100+ articles — many reaching millions of views — about science, technology, and philosophy for publications including The Atlantic, New York Times, BBC Future, Scientific American, Slate, Huffington Post, Quartz, Daily Beast, Aeon, among others. Azarian has authored numerous academic papers, published in peer-reviewed journals such as Human Brain Mapping, Cognition & Emotion, and Acta Psychologica. His blog "Mind in the Machine," hosted by Psychology Today, has received over 8 million views. Azarian worked with The Atlantic and Huffington Post to create viral videos, which he helped write the scripts for and narrated.

Since the dawn of social science, theorists have debated how and why societies appear to change, develop and evolve. Today, this question is pursued by scholars across many different disciplines and our understanding of these dynamics has grown markedly. Yet, there remain important areas of disagreement and debate: what is the difference between societal change, development and evolution? What specific aspects of cultures change, develop or evolve and why? Do societies change, develop or evolve in particular ways, perhaps according to cycles, or stages or in response to survival necessities? How do different disciplines — from sociology to anthropology to psychology and economics — approach these questions? After 10,000 years of history, what does the future hold for culture and society? Shermer and McCaffree discuss: McCaffree's experience being trained as a cop, his research on crime, and his thoughts on the recent spike in crime and violence • Is there any way to solve the problem of gun violence? • how sociologists think about human and social action • diversity, equity, and inclusion • Is the current political polarization really worse than it's been? • cultural evolution vs. biological evolution • horizontal/equalitarian vs. vertical/hierarchical societies • human selfishness and the problem of altruism • between-group and within-group competition and cooperation • fission-fusion in primate bands • Oscillation-Infrastructural Theory of Cultural Evolution • and what the future holds for humanity and society, and more… Dr. Kevin McCaffree is a professor of sociology at the University of North Texas. He is the author or co-author of five books, co-editor of Theoretical Sociology: The Future of a Disciplinary Foundation and series co-editor (with Jonathan H. Turner) of Evolutionary Analysis in the Social Sciences. In addition to these works, he has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and handbook chapters on a variety of topics ranging from cultural evolution to criminology to the sociology of empathy. His two books include Cultural Evolution: The Empirical and Theoretical Landscape, and The Dance of Innovation: Infrastructure, Social Oscillation, and the Evolution of Societies. Along with Anondah Saide, he is one of the two chief researchers for the Skeptic Research Center, and Michael Shermer had the honor of serving on his dissertation committee for his Ph.D. thesis on the rise of the Nones — those who hold no religious affiliation.

Biological sex is no longer accepted as a basic fact of life. It is forbidden to admit that female people sometimes need protection and privacy from male ones. In an analysis that is at once expert, sympathetic and urgent, Helen Joyce offers an antidote to the chaos and cancelling. Shermer and Joyce discuss: What is a woman? What is a man? • conflicting rights: trans vs. women • sex vs. gender; who you identify as vs. who you are attracted to • cross-sex identification • gender dysphoria • social contagions • gender affirming care • puberty blockers, testosterone, hormone treatment • detransitioning • top surgery, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty • preferred pronouns: compelled speech ≠ free speech • trans sports • exclusive spaces, and more… Helen Joyce is a senior staff journalist at The Economist, where she has held several positions, including Britain editor, Finance editor and International editor. Before joining The Economist in 2005 she edited Plus, an online magazine about mathematics published by the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD in mathematics from University College London. On Twitter, she is @HJoyceGender.

In this conversation based on his new book, political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is a return to the empiricist, religious, and nationalist traditions of America and Britain, a distinctive alternative to divine-right monarchy, Puritan theocracy, and liberal revolution. After tracing the tradition from the Wars of the Roses to Burke and across the Atlantic to the American Federalists and Lincoln, Hazony describes the rise and fall of Enlightenment liberalism after World War II and the present-day debates between neoconservatives and national conservatives over how to respond to liberalism and the woke left. In response, Shermer makes the case for Enlightenment liberalism, with its focus on science and reason, as the primary driver of moral progress over the centuries. Hazony criticizes the modern left with its focus on identity politics, while Shermer counters that while the illiberalism of the left can be problematic, a far greater threat to individual liberty and personal autonomy—the bedrock of Enlightenment liberalism—comes from religious and nationalist conservatism on the right. Yoram Hazony, an award-winning political theorist, is the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation in Washington and the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. His previous book, The Virtue of Nationalism (Basic Books, 2018), was named Conservative Book of the Year for 2019 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and has been translated into half a dozen languages. He appears frequently in the U.S. media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fox News, CNN, NPR, Time, The New Republic, The Ben Shapiro Show, and the Rubin Report. A graduate of Princeton University (B.A.) and Rutgers (Ph.D.), Hazony lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children.

Shermer and Strevens discuss: irrationality and how it drives science • the scientific method • the knowledge machine • irrationality • the replication crisis, what caused it, and what to do about it • verification vs. falsification • the iron rule of explanation • Bayesian reasoning vs. falsification • climate/evolution skeptics • model dependent realism • morality • humanism • theistic arguments for: God, origin of life, morality, consciousness • known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns • Why should we believe Anthony Fauci? • how to evaluate media sources of science. If is science so powerful why did it take so long — two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics — for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of the universe? Philosopher of science Michael Strevens argues that science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the astonishing idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument. Using a plethora of vivid historical examples, Strevens demonstrates that scientists willfully ignore religion, theoretical beauty, and even philosophy to embrace a constricted code of argument whose very narrowness channels unprecedented energy into empirical observation and experimentation. Strevens calls this scientific code the iron rule of explanation, and reveals the way in which the rule, precisely because it is unreasonably close-minded, overcomes individual prejudices to lead humanity inexorably toward the secrets of nature. Michael Strevens, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, is a professor of philosophy at New York University. He was born in New Zealand and has been writing about philosophy of science for twenty-five years. He lives in New York.

Shermer and Seth discuss: "mind" and "consciousness" in context of understanding how molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes • controlled hallucinations • the hard problem of consciousness • the self and other minds • consciousness and self-awareness as emergent properties • Where does consciousness go during general anaesthesia? After death? • Star Trek TNG episode 138 "Ship in a Bottle": a VR inside a VR that is indistinguishable from reality • Are we living in a simulation that itself is inside a simulation? • Does Deep Blue know that it beat the great Gary Kasparov in chess? • Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!? • Is Data on Star Trek sentient, conscious, and with feelings? • Can AI systems be conscious? • free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism. Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he co-directs of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. Dr. Seth is Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press) and he sits on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and on the Advisory Committee for 1907 Research and for Chile's Congreso Futuro. His new book is Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.

Most people rely on their gut instinct to decide how to date, who to marry, where to live, what career path to take, how to find happiness, but what if our gut is wrong? Biased, unpredictable, and misinformed, our gut, it turns out, is not all that reliable. Data from hundreds of thousands of dating profiles have revealed surprising successful strategies to get a date; data from hundreds of millions of tax records have uncovered the best places to raise children; data from millions of career trajectories have found previously unknown reasons why some rise to the top. Hard facts and figures consistently contradict our instincts and demonstrate self-help that actually works — whether it involves the best time in life to start a business or how happy it actually makes us to skip a friend's birthday party for a night of Netflix on the couch. From the boring careers that produce the most wealth, to the old-school, data-backed relationship advice so well-worn it's become a literal joke, Stephens-Davidowitz unearths the startling conclusions that the right data can teach us about who we are and what will make our lives better. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, a lecturer at The Wharton School, and a former Google data scientist. He received a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. His research has appeared in the Journal of Public Economics and other prestigious publications. His previous book, Everybody Lies, was a New York Times bestseller and an Economist Book of the Year. He lives in Brooklyn and is a passionate fan of the Mets, Knicks, Jets, and Leonard Cohen.

Shermer and Rosenfeld discuss: why we have a duopoly • gerrymandering • voting restrictions • how we know all elections are not rigged • abortion • immigration • US foreign policy • the rise of conservative and liberal think tanks • ideology • political polarization • political leanings of industrialists vs. tech billionaires and rural poor vs. urban poor • Trump and 2016, 2020, and 2024 (are we facing civil unrest as never seen before?), and more… Sam Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University, specializing in party politics and American political development. His research interests include the history of political parties, the intersection of social movements and formal politics, and the politics of social and economic policymaking. His book, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (University of Chicago Press, 2018), offers an intellectual and institutional history of party polarization in the postwar United States. With Daniel Schlozman at Johns Hopkins University, he is currently writing a book on party development since the Founding, provisionally titled The Hollow Parties. His writing has also appeared in The American Prospect, Boston Review, Democracy, The New Republic, The New York Times, Politico, The Washington Post, and Vox.

Shermer and Morris discuss: the history of Big/Deep History • the US, UK, Europe and the West in the context of Russia and China and his book Why the West Rules — for Now • Russia's war on Ukraine in the context of his book War: What is it Good For? • the future of energy and civilization in the context of his book Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels • "national character" • the similarities and differences in people from the US, UK, and Europe • China and the future of energy and political power • what Britain was like 8000 years ago • the major transitions in British history • Nigel Farage and Brexit, and 5 things that matter then and now: Identity, Mobility, Prosperity, Security, Sovereignty • Adam Smith and the economic revolution • counterfactual history • slavery • the role of ideas in history (civil rights, rule of law, justice, etc.) • colonialism • postcolonialism • reparations • immigration and migration in history and today. Ian Morris is the Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and Professor in History at Stanford University and the author of the critically acclaimed Why the West Rules — for Now, as well as The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations; Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve; and War! What is it Good For? He has published many scholarly books and has directed excavations in Greece and Italy. His new book is Geography is Destiny: Britain's Place in the World: A 10,000-Year History.

The future is uncertain, a bit spooky, possibly dangerous, maybe wonderful. We cope with this never-ending uncertainty by telling stories about the future: future stories. How do we construct those stories? Where is the future, the place where we set those stories? Can we trust our future stories? And what sort of futures do they show us? David Christian is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. In this conversation, he reveals what he thinks the future holds for our species. Shermer and Christian discuss: past patterns projected into the future • What is time and when do the past and future begin? • How long is the present "now"? • A-Series Time and B-Series Time • time as the 4th dimension • chaos theory and predicting the future • entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the direction of time • general relativity and time • how we experience time psychologically and anthropologically • likelihood of outcomes and Bayesian probabilities • how organisms manage the future • how human organisms manage the future • how futurists think about the future • how people in the past thought about the future • the next 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years • the next million years, and the end of time. David Christian is a Professor Emeritus at Macquarie University, where he was formerly a Distinguished Professor of History and the director of the Big History Institute. He cofounded the Big History Project with Bill Gates, his Coursera MOOCs are popular around the world, and he is cocreator of the Macquarie University Big History School. He has delivered keynotes at conferences around the world, including the Davos World Economic Forum, and his TED Talk has been viewed more than 12 million times. He is the author of numerous books and articles, as well as the New York Times bestseller Origin Story.

As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to believe that he was killed by a conspiracy involving multiple assassins. Shermer and Gagné discuss: conspiracies and conspiracy theories • what role conspiracy theories play in society • who believes conspiracy theories and why • why conspiracy theorists rewrite the past • paranoid skepticism as a role in conspiracism • Oliver Stone's "alternative version of history" • scapegoat theory of conspiracism (Rene Girard) and the military industrial complex • Marx's dialectical materialism and conspiracism: all life is a battle between rival tribes • stolen future theory of conspiracism: there but for the conspiracy… • common themes in conspiracy theories like JFK, 9/11 Truth, Obama Birtherism, QAnon, Rigged Election and many others • JFK: the lone-gunman theory vs. hundreds of conspiracy theories • the nostalgic myth of "Camelot" and balancing the ledger of moral outrage • when Jack Became Jesus: JFK as a crucified Jesus • who was Lee Harvey Oswald and why did he kill Kennedy? • Cuba, Castro, the Bay of Pigs debacle, and Operation Northwoods • the CIA and why it is rational to be skeptical of their activities • how to determine if a conspiracy theory is true, false, or uncertain • epistemology, truth claims, how to evaluate evidence, knowledge as justified true belief • knowing vs. believing: I don't want to believe in anything that must be believed in to be true • empirical truths vs. mythic truths • Did the resurrection of Jesus really happen or is it a mythological narrative with moral meaning. Michel Jacques Gagné teaches courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and ethics in the Humanities Department of Champlain College Saint-Lambert, located near Montreal, Canada. His podcast is called Paranoid Planet and his latest book under discussion is Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination.

Michael Shermer speaks with Andrew Yang about the Forward Party, the future of politics in a party duopoly, political partisanship, and how to bring about the change we need. This conversation is based on Yang's new book Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy. Shermer and Yang discuss: why we have a political duopoly, instead of, say, 7 parties like in Germany • ranked-choice voting and open primaries • gerrymandering and voting restriction laws and policies • the Rational Public • fairness doctrine • local journalism, newspapers, and TV stations • term limits • nonpartisan primaries • data as a property right • Department of Technology • Universal Basic Income (UBI) • reparations • abortion • the polarization of radio, television, and social media • ideology and political polarization • Trump in 2016, 2020 … and 2024? • what it's like to run for President • what his fellow politicians are really like in person • what he learned on the campaign trail • how his many failures in life prepared him for political campaigning • why market solutions to social media polarization won't work • why you should join the Forward Party even if you don't agree with all their points. Andrew Yang was a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and a 2021 candidate for mayor of New York City. Named by President Obama as a Presidential Ambassador of Global Entrepreneurship, he is the founder of Humanity Forward and Venture for America. Yang's New York Times bestselling book The War on Normal People helped introduce the idea of universal basic income into the political mainstream. Yang is a graduate of Brown University, where he graduated with degrees in economics and political science, and Columbia Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He lives with his family in New York.

Shermer and Arikha discuss: what it means for a mind to be disrupted • dementia, senility, and Alzheimer's disease • mental illness and the labeling problem • the social construction of mental illness • neurology and psychiatry • agency and volition • memory and amnesia • autobiographical memory • self and embodied self • brain modularity • brain as a machine • emotions and cognition: bodily changes first then the awareness of the emotion • conversion disorder/hysteria • depression • metacognition: thinking about thinking • exteroception and interoception. Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. The author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, she is associate fellow of the Warburg Institute and honorary fellow of the Center for the Politics of Feelings, London, and research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. She is based in Florence, Italy.

What is gender? How different are men and women? Are differences due to biological sex or to culture? How do they compare with what is known about our fellow primates? Do apes also culturally learn their sex roles or is "gender" uniquely human? Shermer and de Waal discuss: sex and gender in humans, primates, and mammals • who you identify as vs. who you're attracted to • binary vs. nonbinary vs. continuum: how fuzzy can human sex categories be for a sexually reproducing species? • gender differences in physical and mental characteristics • why would homosexuality evolve? • chimpanzees and bonobos • what is the "purpose" of orgasms in women, nipples in men? • myths of the demure female • rape in humans and other primates: what is the purpose — sex, power or both? • murder, and human violence: how do men and women differ? • dominance and power • rivalry, friendship, competition and cooperation • maternal and paternal care of the young • same-sex sex • monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, etc. in humans, primates & mammals • grandmother hypothesis • primates & primatologists, humans & anthropologists: bias in science • the future of primates and primatology. Frans de Waal has been named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People. The author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? among many other works, he is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's Psychology Department and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.