The Michael Shermer Show

Shermer and Gold discuss: diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media • social justice movements and their motivations • bias in STEM fields • why people believe weird things • exorcisms • UFOs • faith healers • Derren Brown and how magic works on minds • hypnosis • sex and where to have an affair • Ashley Madison • female/male differences in sexual preferences and choices • non-offending pedophiles in Berlin • the curious case of Jimmy Seville: why didn't anyone notice his pedophilia? Andrew Gold is a British journalist whose podcast On the Edge with Andrew Gold investigates belief, cults and extreme ideologies. He speaks five languages, has lived in six countries and has made award-winning documentaries around the world for the BBC and HBO about fringe topics, from exorcism and UFOs to abortion and porn stars, and even more controversial terrain, such as his two years investigating pedophiles. On his podcast he has interviewed Richard Dawkins, Amanda Knox, John McWhorter, Gad Saad, Peter Boghossian, Robbie Williams and that Shermer guy…as well as several psychopaths, murderers, cult defectors and a guy who had to eat his friends after a plane crash. The reason he started his podcast is because the UK TV producers who work with the BBC kept insisting that he no longer be visible on-screen in his films because, he was told, they needed "a minority."

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.

This podcast explores the history of corporations and their impact on society, from ancient Rome to the modern day. Topics include the role of corporations in completing expensive projects, discrimination in financial industries, the impact of Henry Ford on car manufacturing, the power of oil companies and the need for government regulation, the fragility of Twitter's monopoly, risks and downsides of private equity firms, the purpose of bankruptcy, 'too big to fail' companies, the efficiency of corporations and its impact on consumer behavior, the impact of the Civil War on slavery, and concerns about AI technology and automation.

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.