What if the way we approach mental health is quietly making things worse? Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sami Timimi joins Michael Shermer to examine some of the core assumptions behind modern ps...
What is consciousness, really? Why does it not simply switch on at a single moment? Neuroscientist Niko Kukushkin explains how even single cells can show primitive forms of memory and agency, why t...
Francis Crick is best known as one of the figures behind the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but the familiar story leaves out as much as it explains. Historian of science Matthew C...
What do you do when someone believes you shouldn't exist? Daryl Davis didn't protest. He didn't shout. He sat down, asked questions, and kept showing up. Over decades, that approach has led more th...
Open inquiry depends on the ability to ask uncomfortable questions and follow evidence wherever it leads. Eric Kaufmann argues that this norm is now under strain. Drawing on history, survey data, a...
Brain-computer interfaces are moving out of the lab and into real medical use. In this episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael Shermer talks with Dr. Matt Angle, founder and CEO of Paradromics...
At the turn of the 20th century, millions of Americans, including elite scientists, major newspapers, and cultural icons, were convinced that Mars was home to an advanced civilization. In this epis...
What if the great discoveries of science came in the "wrong" order? The Laws of Thermodynamics were discovered well after the creation of algebra, classical physics, and chemistry, but are perhaps ...
Criminal profiling promises certainty in the face of horror: this is what a killer looks like, this is how they think, this is how we stop them. But what if that promise is mostly an illusion? In t...
For nearly two centuries, international relations have been premised on the idea of the "Great Powers." As the thinking went, these mighty states—the European empires of the nineteenth century, the...
In this episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael sits down with two giants of mind and machine science: Jay McClelland, one of the founders of modern neural networks, and Gaurav Suri, computati...
Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about the past, present, and future of our relationship with space. Drawing on his new book The Giant Leap, Scharf ...
In this episode, Michel-Yves Bolloré lays out his case for why modern cosmology, fine-tuning, and the limits of materialism point toward a creator. Drawing on physics, thermodynamics, probability, ...
Have you ever thought about the science and history of … wind? In this episode, Simon Winchester explains why eastbound flights are usually faster than flying west, and how the discovery of the jet...
In this episode, Angus Fletcher explains why the human brain doesn't work like a computer and why our deepest strengths come not from logic or data processing but from imagination, emotion, and the...
War begins in the human mind long before it unfolds on the battlefield. In this episode, Michael Shermer sits down with Nicholas Wright, a neurologist, neuroscientist, security strategist, and advi...
Why do smart people join dangerous cults, follow bad leaders, or stay silent when they know something's wrong? In this episode, Michael Shermer talks with organizational psychologist Colin Fisher a...
In this episode, Michael Shermer explores anomalous experiences through personal anecdotes and historical examples. He reflects on how to balance healthy skepticism with open-mindedness, and how to...
A former senior intelligence officer explains how espionage is evolving in the age of AI and amid rising global tensions with China, and why the mass harvesting of data affects not just nation-stat...
Archaeologist Ken Feder sheds light on how archaeology separates evidence from wishful thinking and entertaining storytelling. He explains what rock art, radiocarbon dating, and DNA can really tell...
