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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

In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes influencing American academia.
 
In her new book Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin reveals how higher education institutions—long considered bastions of free thought—are compromising their values for financial gain and international partnerships.
 
Her investigation uncovers the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments, exposing university leaders who prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. She also describes incidents in which professors and administrators weighed the costs of offending repressive regimes that provide their funding.
 
McLaughlin’s work offers a sobering look at how these compromises in academia mirror broader patterns across industries such as technology, sports, and entertainment.
 
Sarah McLaughlin is a senior scholar of global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Her writing about free speech issues, including protest and blasphemy laws, has been featured in publications including Foreign Policy and The Huffington Post. Her new book is Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.

How Foreign Governments Influence U.S. Universities

In this conversation, Michael Shermer and Dr. Eric Topol discuss the realties of aging, with particular focus on the role of AI in enhancing patient care and disease prevention, the importance of lifestyle factors, and the limitations of genetic testing in predicting health outcomes.
 
Topol also explains the dangers of ultra-processed foods, their link to inflammation, and the role of GLP-1 drugs in promoting healthier eating habits. The conversation also covers diet, particularly the differences between chicken and red meat, and the significance of sleep for overall health. Plus, consumption of microplastics, cholesterol management and statins, the critical role of social connections in maintaining mental and physical health, and the future of personalized medicine in cancer prevention.
 
Eric Topol is a cardiologist and one of the top ten most cited researchers in medicine, known for his groundbreaking studies on AI in medicine, genomics, and digitized clinical trials. Topol is also the executive vice president and a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, the largest nonprofit biomedical institute in the United States. He was named one of the Top 100 most influential people in health in 2024 by Time. His new book is Super Agers.

Can We Prevent Aging? Eric Topol on Genes, Lifestyle, and AI in Healthcare

Isabelle Boemeke explains how nuclear energy is our best option for ensuring the future of the planet—it can power cities, desalinate water, create carbon-free fertilizer, and heat homes, all with the smallest environmental footprint of any energy source. She also discusses common objections to nuclear energy, including safety concerns and waste management, the potential of microreactors, and the importance of nuclear energy in space exploration.
 
Isabelle Boemeke is a nuclear electricity educator. Her new book is Rad Future: The Untold Story of Nuclear Electricity and How it Will Save the World.

Is Nuclear Energy Our Best Shot at Saving the Planet?

In his new book Coming Clean, Eric Heinze rejects the idea that we should be less woke. In fact, we need more wokeness, but of a new kind. Yes, we must teach about classism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and other gross injustices, but we must also educate the public about the left’s own support for regimes that damaged and destroyed millions of lives for over a century—Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, or the Kim dynasty in North Korea.
 
Criticisms of Western wrongdoing are certainly important, yet Heinze explains that most on the political left have rarely engaged in the kinds of open and public self-scrutiny that they demand from others. Citing examples as different as the Ukraine war, LGBTQ+ people in Cuba, the concept of “hatred,” and the problem of leftwing antisemitism, Heinze explains why and how the left must change its memory politics if it is to claim any ethical high ground.
 
Eric Heinze is Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything (MIT Press), among other books, and has published over 100 articles and has been featured in radio and television and other media around the world. His new book is Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left.

Why the Left Needs Its Own Reckoning

Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as “not religious” has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in “organized religion” has declined significantly. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents.
 
All this is clear. But what is less clear is exactly why this is happening. We know a lot more about the fact that traditional American religion has declined than we do about why this is so.
 
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents and emerging adults, and social theory. He has written many books, including Divided by Faith, Soul Searching, and Moral, Believing Animals. His new book is Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America.

Is Traditional Religion Doomed?

In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with historian Sophia Rosenfeld about how modern notions of personal choice—from Amazon shopping to Tinder swipes—emerged from centuries of cultural, religious, political, and economic transformation. Was there ever a time when choice wasn’t synonymous with freedom? Why were early ideas of “common sense” and “free will” so limited? And what happens when choice itself becomes overwhelming?
 
From Enlightenment ideals to the sexual revolution and the abortion debate, Rosenfeld traces how our expanding range of options—and the meaning we attach to them—has shaped everything from our romantic lives to our political systems. A revealing look at the hidden history of freedom in a world that sometimes offers too much.
 
Sophia Rosenfeld is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her new book is The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.

Drowning in Decisions: Do We Have Too Many Choices?

What can a lifetime of scientific discovery teach us about the universe—and ourselves? In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Shermer sits down with Lord Martin Rees, renowned cosmologist, astrophysicist, and former Astronomer Royal, to reflect on the forces that shape scientific success, from personal luck to cultural context. Rees shares insights on the mysteries of cosmology, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the paradoxes that still puzzle humanity.
 
Rees also shares intimate reflections on his friend and Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, thoughts on Fermi’s Paradox, and why some truths may forever lie beyond human comprehension.
 
The discussion also turns toward urgent global issues: the promise and peril of AI, ethical dilemmas in a rapidly advancing world, and how religion and terrorism could shape our future.

Are We Alone? Martin Rees on Aliens, The Fermi Paradox & The Fate of Humanity

When you are faced with a decision, do you consider the best outcome, or do you consider your deepest values about which actions are appropriate? Steven Sloman contrasts these two primary strategies for making decisions: consequentialism or prioritizing one’s sacred values. He argues that, while both modes of decision making are necessary tools for a good decision maker, people err by deploying sacred values more often than they should, especially when it comes to sociopolitical issues. As a result, we oversimplify, grow disgusted and angry, and act in ways that contribute to social polarization.
 
Drawing on historical and current examples of the two decision-making strategies in action, Sloman provides a thorough overview of the psychology of decision making, including work on judgment, conscious and unconscious decision-making processes, the roles of emotion, and even an analysis of habit and addiction.
 
Steven Sloman has taught at Brown University since 1992. He is the author of Causal Models and a coauthor of The Knowledge Illusion (with Phil Fernbach). His new book is The Cost of Conviction: How Our Deepest Values Lead Us Astray.

The True Cost of Conviction

Michael Shermer in conversation with Debra Soh at FreedomFest 2025 in Palm Springs, CA.
 
Video courtesy of FreedomFest. Additional FreedomFest videos can be viewed on CiVL.

Debra Soh and Michael Shermer at FreedomFest 2025

Drawing from intensive on-the-ground reporting in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, Douglas Murray places the latest violence in its proper historical context. He takes listeners on a harrowing journey through the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, piecing together the exclusive accounts from victims, survivors, and even the terrorists responsible for the atrocities.
 
Douglas Murray is a bestselling author and journalist. His books include the Sunday Times number-one bestsellers The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason; The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity and Islam; and The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity. He has been Associate Editor and regular writer at The Spectator since 2012, and contributes to other publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun, the Mail on Sunday and the New York Post. A regular guest on broadcast news channels, he has also spoken at numerous universities, parliaments, and the White House. His new book is On Democracies and Death Cults.

Douglas Murray on Hamas, Iran, and the Collapse of the Two-State Solution

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope.
 
Shermer and Goodenough discuss: origins of her personal beliefs • origins life, RNA, DNA, consciousness, language, morality • myths and religions • what it means to be “religious” • religious naturalism • where the laws of physics came from • why the universe seems so strange • chance and evolution • fine tuning of the cosmos • autocatalysis and emergence • purpose of religion • ethics and morality without religion.
 
Ursula Goodenough is Professor Emerita of Biology at Washington University. One of America's leading cell biologists, she is the author of a bestselling textbook on genetics, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard. Her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, is now in a second edition. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association.

336. The Sacred Depths of Nature — Ursula Goodenough on How to Find Sacred Scientific Spirituality

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