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Michael Shermer

The Michael Shermer Show is a series of long-form conversations between Dr. Michael Shermer and leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.

The Michael Shermer Show

Historically, Western societies were defined by stark divisions between wealth and poverty, with only a slim middle class. Today, the economic landscape has transformed, largely through political and institutional changes that have enabled wealth distribution and middle-class growth. Economist Daniel Waldenström explores this evolution, highlighting that effective social and tax policies are essential to advancing shared prosperity without undermining entrepreneurship.
 
Using rigorous research, Waldenström’s work demonstrates how wealth accumulation patterns have shifted since the 1800s, emphasizing the significant role of increased access to education, property ownership, and pensions. His insights advocate for policies that promote wealth creation across all social tiers, ensuring sustainable growth and financial security for future generations.
 
Shermer and Waldenström cover the scientific basis of economics, how personal beliefs shape economic theories, and differences between income and wealth inequality. They delve into historical wealth disparities, factors that have driven middle-class growth, and policies like the Laffer Curve and labor taxation. Waldenström also offers practical advice on fiscal policy and strategies to help poorer nations achieve wealth and stability.

Building a Wealthier, Fairer Society

Guy P. Harrison is an acclaimed author of nine thought-provoking books that encourage curiosity and critical thinking. In this engaging episode, he and Michael Shermer discuss how science fiction inspires us to think beyond the ordinary and explore the vast possibilities of human progress. From his latest work to his passion for rational dialogue, Harrison’s insights are both inspiring and accessible.
 
Shermer and Harrison tackle a diverse range of topics, including the societal value of science fiction, the flawed debates about religion and evolution, and why humanity might ultimately prevail despite existential threats like AI. They examine UFOs and the Fermi Paradox, discuss redefining atheism, and share optimism about human progress. Harrison’s engaging insights inspire curiosity and critical thinking throughout the episode.
 
Guy Harrison is an award-winning writer and author of nine books, including Think: Why You Should Question Everything, At Least Know This, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God, and Good Thinking. His work has been featured in Skeptic, Reader’s Digest, The Institute of Arts and Ideas, Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, Big Think, and many other publications. Guy is a longtime essayist for Psychology Today and contributed a chapter about race and racism to The Cognitive Science of Beliefpublished by Cambridge University Press. Random House featured his book Think: Why You Should Question Everything as recommended reading for all first-year university students, and the San Diego Union-Tribunenamed At Least Know This a top-five summer read. His new book, Damn You, Entropy! 1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes was a New Scientist magazine “Best Science Fiction Books of the Month” selection.

Rationality, Science Fiction, and Humanity’s Future

In The Suggestible Brain, cognitive psychologist Amir Raz delves into how suggestions can influence everything from wine preferences to memory and emotional reactions. As society grapples with misinformation, Raz’s research spans across cognitive psychology, sociology, and culture, emphasizing the profound impact of suggestion on both personal and collective levels. Raz’s expertise, merging magic with neuropsychology, unveils actionable insights for utilizing suggestion to enhance mental resilience and defend against manipulation.
 
Dr. Raz’s career includes roles as Canada Research Chair and Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Brain and Behavioral Sciences. A speaker and author, his insights on suggestion have been widely recognized by media and academic audiences. His work, grounded in extensive research and engaging storytelling, highlights the interconnectedness of suggestion with consciousness, memory, and identity.
 
Shermer and Raz discuss: the evolutionary basis of suggestibility, how brain imaging captures the power of suggestion, and the psychology behind hypnosis, meditation, and placebos. They discuss historical influences like Milgram’s obedience studies and explore suggestibility’s role in social contagions and cults. Raz also shares insights on psychedelics, neurofeedback, and using suggestion to manage conditions like ADHD, depression, and anxiety.

The Suggestible Brain

In the U.S. alone, more than $400 billion are donated to charity each year—equivalent to two percent of American GDP. This generosity is wonderful, but these gifts don’t do nearly as much good as they could. In recent years, researchers have started studying the effectiveness of different charities, just as investors study the effectiveness of different companies. These researchers ask questions like: How much money does it cost for this charity to save someone’s life? The answers are stunning. Charity experts estimate that the most effective charities are about 100 times more effective than typical charities. For example, you can do more good by donating $100 to a highly effective charity than by donating $10,000 to a typical charity.
 
Shermer and Greene discuss effective altruism, evidence-based philanthropy, and GivingMultiplier’s unique model for maximizing charitable impact. They explore moral judgment theories, from deontology to consequentialism, and delve into complex topics like donor fatigue, public vs. private solutions, abortion, capital punishment, and political polarization. Greene shares practical insights into addressing societal divides and inspiring collective action.
 
Joshua Greene is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard, where he teaches “Evolving Morality: From Primordial Soup to Superintelligent Machines,” one of the university’s most popular courses. He is also the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them, which integrates moral philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to explain the underlying causes of modern conflict. Josh’s latest applied research has led to novel, evidence-based strategies for reducing political animosity and inspiring thousands of people to support nonprofits addressing extreme poverty, climate change, and other pressing societal issues. His new organization is GivingMultiplier.org.

Evidence-Based Charity and Moral Psychology

William Green delves into the lives of iconic investors like Buffett, Munger, and Templeton, unraveling how their approaches extend beyond financial success. These super-investors possess unique skills such as rigorous thinking, resilience, and intuition. Through years of interviews, Green reveals how their principles can improve decision-making, manage risks, and help us thrive in uncertain environments.
 
William Green has written for top publications like Time, Forbes, and The Economist, and edited Time’s Asian and European editions. He coauthored several books, including Guy Spier’s The Education of a Value Investor. Born in London, he studied English at Oxford and earned a journalism master’s at Columbia. Now based in New York, he lives with his family. His latest book is Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life.
 
Shermer and Green discuss the financial literacy of Americans, the mechanics of wealth creation, and the psychology behind investment decisions. They cover the stock market, the importance of resilience, and the relationship between money, happiness, and luck. The conversation includes wisdom from legendary investors, the power of compound interest, and practical strategies for financial independence.

How the Greatest Investors Win in Life and Markets

The renowned Harvard cosmologist and theoretical physicist explores a scenario in which a disk of dark matter—the elusive stuff in the universe that interacts through gravity like ordinary matter, but that doesn’t emit or absorb light—dislodged a comet from the Oort cloud that was ultimately responsible for the dinosaurs’ extinction. Dr. Lisa Randall teaches us an enormous amount about dark matter, our Universe, our galaxy, asteroids, and comets—and the process by which scientists explore new concepts.

1. Dr. Lisa Randall — Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman (1918–88) was a towering scientific genius who could make himself understood by anyone and who became as famous for the wit and wisdom of his popular lectures and writings as for his fundamental contributions to science. The Quotable Feynman is a treasure-trove of this revered and beloved scientist’s most profound, provocative, humorous, and memorable quotations on a wide range of subjects edited by his daughter, Michelle Feynman, who will discuss her father’s life and legacy. In addition, physicist Seamus Blackey will bring Feynman’s van, newly restored and recently featured on The Big Bang Theory, so you can get your photograph taken with the famous vehicle featuring Feynman diagrams. Order The Quotable Feynman from Amazon.
 
Our special guest at this salon will be: Dr. Leonard Mlodinow, physicist and author of Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life and The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos.

2. Michelle Feynman — The Quotable Feynman & His Van

The Magic of Math is the math book you wish you had in school. Using a delightful assortment of examples—from ice cream scoops and poker hands to measuring mountains and making magic squares—this book empowers you to see the beauty, simplicity, and truly magical properties behind those formulas and equations that once left your head spinning. You’ll learn the key ideas of classic areas of mathematics like arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, but you’ll also have fun fooling around with Fibonacci numbers, investigating infinity, and marveling over mathematical magic tricks that will make you look like a math genius!
 
A mathematician who is known throughout the world as the “mathemagician,” Arthur Benjamin mixes mathematics and magic to make the subject fun, attractive, and easy to understand. In The Magic of Math, Benjamin does more than just teach skills: with a tip of his magic hat, he takes you on as his apprentice to teach you how to appreciate math the way he does. He motivates you to learn something new about how to solve for x, because there is real pleasure to be found in the solution to a challenging problem or in using numbers to do something useful. But what he really wants you to do is be able to figure out why, for that’s where you’ll find the real beauty, power, and magic of math.
 
If you are already someone who likes math, this Science Salon will dazzle and amuse you. If you never particularly liked or understood math, Benjamin will enlighten you and—with a wave of his magic wand—turn you into a math lover.

3. Dr. Arthur Benjamin — The Magic of Math: Solving for x and Figuring Out Why

How does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules, award-winning biologist and author Sean Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simple yet profoundly important questions, and shows how their discoveries matter for our health and the health of the planet we depend upon.
 
One of the most important revelations about the natural world is that everything is regulated—there are rules that regulate the amount of every molecule in our bodies and rules that govern the numbers of every animal and plant in the wild. And the most surprising revelation about the rules that regulate life at such different scales is that they are remarkably similar—there is a common underlying logic of life. Carroll recounts how our deep knowledge of the rules and logic of the human body has spurred the advent of revolutionary life-saving medicines, and makes the compelling case that it is now time to use the Serengeti Rules to heal our ailing planet.

4. Dr. Sean B. Carroll — The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

On Thursday, February 11, 2016, the National Science Foundation made a thrilling announcement: gravitational waves—first predicted by Einstein as part of his general theory of relativity in 1916—had been detected for the first time. This incredible development made front page news and was reported by outlets across the country. How was such a remarkable discovery, a long hundred years after Einstein’s prediction, made possible?
 
In this Science Salon based on her new book, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, astrophysicist and award-winning writer Dr. Janna Levin tells the epic story of the scientific campaign to record these waves—the holy grail of modern cosmology. A handful of physicists, led by Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever at Caltech and Rainer Weiss at MIT, have been working nearly their entire careers to conceive of, design, and build an instrument sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves. Levin delves into the lives and fates of the scientists, painting compelling portraits of these very human visionaries. She journeys from Los Angeles to Boston, to the LIGO interferometers in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana, to the labs, offices, and observatories where the work in this great quest has painstakingly unfolded over the past five decades. Her account of the personalities, surprises, setbacks, and successes is a compelling and intimate portrait of the people and processes of modern science.

5. Dr. Janna Levin — Gravitational Waves, Black Holes and the Nature of the Cosmos

Dr. Benjamin Bergen is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, and in his new book he explains why profanity is so appealing to us. Let’s face it, we all swear. Whether we’re happy or mad, uttering a four-letter word seems to be a natural occurrence for most of us. But why do we swear, even when we know we’re breaking cultural taboos? Why are some words off limits in certain countries or deemed offensive in past centuries but are considered perfectly tame in others? What does all this g*ddamn swearing tell us about our language and our brains? Bergen has the answers as he illuminates the controversial and complex nature of profanity and its relationship on our culture.

7. Dr. Benjamin Bergen — What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves

7. Dr. Benjamin Bergen — What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves

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