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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

Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi has lived a life that sounds almost impossible: a childhood marked by poverty, violence, and constant upheaval; a teenage obsession with Einstein; a stint in the Navy; addiction and recovery; work as a janitor; and eventually a PhD in physics from Stanford.
 
In this conversation, Michael Shermer and Oluseyi talk about his new book, Why Do We Exist?, and the biggest questions science can ask: what came before the Big Bang, whether the multiverse is real, why the universe seems fine-tuned for life, what dark matter and dark energy really mean, and why alien civilizations may be far rarer than we hope.
 
Hakeem Oluseyi is a multidisciplinary astrophysicist, multi-patented inventor, award-winning author and journalist, and internationally recognized educator. His new book is Why Do We Exist?: The Nine Realms of Universe That Make You Possible.

Why Do We Exist? Hakeem Oluseyi

A viral story is spreading across media: a mysterious string of scientists connected to UFOs, nuclear weapons, aerospace, and defense work have disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances. Politicians are calling it a possible national security threat.
 
Michael Shermer takes a skeptical look.

Shermer Says 9: The "Dead Scientists," Explained

What kind of person helps build a regime like the Third Reich? A monster? A madman? Or something far more unsettling?
 
Michael Shermer sits down with author Jack El-Hai to talk about the true story behind Nuremberg. At the center is Dr. Douglas Kelley, the American psychiatrist assigned to evaluate the top Nazi defendants after World War II, including Hermann Göring. What he found was not comforting: many of these men were intelligent, ambitious, psychologically functional, and disturbingly normal.
 
This conversation gets into the strange duel between Kelley and Göring, the psychological testing at Nuremberg, the limits of psychiatry, the difference between leaders and followers, and the question that still won't go away: how do power-hungry people rise and do evil, and why do so many others go along with them?
 
Jack El-Hai is an author and journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, GQ, Wired, Scientific American, and Discover. His books, including The Lobotomist, The Lost Brothers, and Face in the Mirror, have been translated into twenty languages. He lectures widely on writing and medical history. His book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist was recently adapted into the feature film Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek.

Not Monsters. Not Madmen. Just Men.

What actually makes a life feel meaningful? In this conversation, Daniel Coyle joins Michael Shermer to talk about why fulfillment rarely comes from optimization, status, or trying to "win" at everything. Instead, it grows out of connection, shared effort, curiosity, and the kinds of projects that pull people out of themselves and into real community.
 
Coyle makes the case that flourishing is not a mood and not a hack. It's a process. It happens in groups, in relationships, and in the messy work of building something with other people.
 
Daniel Coyle is the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code, which was named Best Business Book of the Year by Bloomberg, BookPal, and Business Insider. Coyle has served as an advisor to many high-performing organizations, including the Navy SEALs, Microsoft, Google, and the Cleveland Guardians. His other books include The Talent Code, The Secret Race, The Little Book of Talent, and Hardball: A Season in the Projects, which was made into a movie starring Keanu Reeves. His new book is Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment.

Flourishing in the Age of Algorithms

What actually causes cognitive decline, and how much of it can we do something about?
 
In this episode, Michael talks with neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Majid Fotuhi about dementia, Alzheimer's, memory loss, and the everyday habits that shape brain health over time. They discuss why Alzheimer's is only part of the story, why some people remain mentally sharp into old age, and what the evidence says about exercise, sleep, diet, stress, and cognitive activity.
 
They also cover ADHD, attention, brain training, and the difference between ordinary forgetfulness and something more serious.
 
At the center of it all is a simple but important idea: many people think cognitive decline is just an unavoidable part of aging, when in fact there is often more room to protect brain function than most of us realize.
 
Majid Fotuhi, MD, PhD, is an adjunct professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins's Mind/Brain Institute, an adjunct professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at George Washington University, and is the medical director of NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center. His groundbreaking, proprietary research has been published in The Lancet, Nature, Neurology, Neuron, Proceedings of National Academy of Science, the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease, Journal of Rehabilitation, and Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports, among others. His new book is The Invincible Brain: The Clinically Proven Plan to Age-Proof Your Brain and Stay Sharp for Life.

What Really Prevents Cognitive Decline

Why does religion still dominate American politics when so many other wealthy democracies secularized long ago?
 
In this episode, Michael Shermer talks with historian Matthew Avery Sutton about the long relationship between Christianity and American power. From the Puritans to Lincoln, from the Scopes trial to the Religious Right, from slavery to same-sex marriage, this conversation tracks how religious belief has shaped the country, and how politics keeps reshaping religion in return.
 
Matthew Avery Sutton is the Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of History at Washington State University. His new book is Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity.

How Christianity Made America—and How America Remade Christianity

How does something living emerge from something that isn't? 
 
In this episode, Lee Cronin pushes the question back even further: before cells, before DNA, before biology as we usually think of it, what kind of process could make matter start organizing itself into something alive?
 
He and Michael Shermer get into assembly theory, RNA, autocatalysis, and the deeper puzzle of whether causation and selection may already be at work long before the first organism appears. The conversation also branches into consciousness, free will, and the possibility that life may be widespread in the universe, even if it looks nothing like life on Earth.
 
Lee Cronin is Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where he leads one of the world's largest multidisciplinary chemistry research groups. He has raised more than $35 million in grant funding, with current research income of $15 million, and has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed papers, including recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals and construct chemical computers.

What Turns Sand Into Cells? How Nonliving Matter Becomes Alive

On Easter Sunday, Michael asks whether the resurrection should be understood as history, myth, or something deeper.

Shermer Says 8: Easter Without the Miracle

Fewer people are having sex, fewer are forming lasting relationships, and many feel more isolated than ever. Why?
 
Michael Shermer sits down with neuroscientist and author Debra Soh to discuss her new book Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. They talk about the so-called sex recession, why modern dating feels so broken, and how social media, pornography, AI companions, and changing expectations between men and women are reshaping intimacy.
 
The discussion also touches on Gen Z mental health, dating apps, the manosphere, marriage, and the broader social consequences of a culture that increasingly substitutes screens for real human connection.
 
Debra Soh is a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior. She received her PhD from York University in Toronto and worked as a scientific researcher for eleven years. As a journalist, Soh writes about technology, health, and the politicization of science.

Debra Soh on Why Men and Women Are Drifting Apart, Dating Apps, and Gen Z

What do gaslighting, bullying, cults, and coercion have in common? In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with Jennifer Fraser about the psychology and neuroscience of manipulation, the recurring structure of abuse cultures, and the way authority can distort perception. Their discussion looks at fear, humiliation, retaliation, favoritism, empathy deficits, and the warning signs that distinguish legitimate leadership from coercive control across schools, workplaces, sports, relationships, and institutions.
 
Jennifer Fraser is the author of four books and an international expert on bullying and abuse. Her latest book is The Gaslit Brain: Protect Your Brain from the Lies of Bullying, Gaslighting, and Institutional Complicity.

Shermer Says 9: The "Dead Scientists," Explained

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