The Michael Shermer Show

When award-winning science writer Amy Alkon was blindsided by her first hot flash, it kicked off a cascade of symptoms—drenching night sweats, insomnia, and a rage she couldn’t explain. But what shocked her more was how little real science her doctor had to offer.

In this episode, Alkon shares what she uncovered in her deep dive into the research on menopause and perimenopause—the critical yet often neglected years leading up to me...

What began as a call for justice has, in many cases, become an engine of conformity. In this searching conversation, Andrew Doyle (author, satirist, and cultural critic) joins Michael Shermer to unpack the trajectory of the woke movement: from its roots in anti-bigotry and awareness to its current entanglement with censorship, identitarian dogma, and ideological rigidity.

Drawing on his new book, The End of Woke Doyle traces the in...

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has unleashed unimaginable growth in opportunity and prosperity. And yet, at key points in American history, economic disruption has led to a greater role for government, ostensibly to protect against capitalism’s excesses. Today, government regulates, mandates, subsidizes and controls a growing share of the American economy.

Today on the show, retired U.S. Senator Phil Gramm,...

By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all?

Cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities: bouncing and cyclic universes, time loops, creations from nothing, multiverses, black hole births, string theories, and holograms.

Incorporating insights from ...

In 2010, in a small New Hampshire town, next door to a copy center and framing shop, a ghost lab opened. The Kitt Research Initiative’s mission was to use the scientific method to document the existence of spirits. Founder Andy Kitt was known as a straight-shooter; he was unafraid—perhaps eager—to offend other paranormal investigators by exposing the fraudulence of their less advanced techniques. But when KRI started to lose money,...

This is the inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.

Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly―experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the...

In this eye-opening episode, Michael Shermer chats with evolutionist Telmo Pievani about the surprising coexistence—and hybridization—of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

They discuss recent scientific discoveries, the evolving understanding of race and biology, and the crucial role of serendipity in advancing scientific knowledge.

This episode offers a nuanced perspective on how unexpected findings continue to reshape our understandi...

Amid rising concerns about AI, inequality, trade wars, and globalization, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist John Cassidy takes a bold approach: he tells the story of capitalism through its most influential critics.

From the Luddites and early communists to the Wages for Housework movement and modern degrowth advocates, Cassidy’s global narrative features both iconic thinkers—Smith, Marx, Keynes—and lesser-known vo...

What does your diet have to do with your mood? Is mercury in fish really dangerous? Psychiatrist Dr. Drew Ramsey joins Michael Shermer to discuss the science behind nutritional psychiatry and how food, sleep, exercise, and social habits influence brain health. They explore why mental health issues are rising—especially among teens—and what role parenting, social media, and modern lifestyles play.

The conversation also covers the ef...

Jacob Mchangama, author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, joins Michael to examine the evolving landscape of free expression amid rising political and cultural tensions. They discuss how far governments, universities, and tech platforms should go in regulating speech, and what’s at stake when they do.

In this episode:

• Should non-citizens have the same speech protections as citizens?
• Social media, mental ...

Is it really possible to change your entire personality in a year? An award-winning journalist experiments with her own personality to find out—and reveals the science behind lasting change.

Research shows that you can alter your personality traits by behaving in ways that align with the kind of person you’d like to be—a process that can make you happier, healthier, and more successful. Olga embarked on an “experiment” to see wheth...

The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today. Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and re...

David Zweig’s new book An Abundance of Caution (MIT Press) is an account of the decision-making process behind the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. In fascinating and meticulously reported detail, Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists to eminent health officials—repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence.

B...

It’s tempting to see ourselves as damaged or powerless—defined by past traumas, overwhelming emotions, and daily struggles. But is that really the most helpful way to understand ourselves? Does seeing ourselves as victims lead to growth?

Psychologist and author Scott Barry Kaufman joins us to examine how popular narratives around sensitivity, self-esteem, and emotional regulation may be holding us back. He unpacks the psychological...

Why do ordinary people carry out extraordinary harm when simply told to do so? From the Holocaust to the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia, history shows how obedience to authority can lead to unimaginable acts. But what’s happening in the brain when we follow orders—even ones that conflict with our morals?

In this episode, we speak with neuroscientist Emilie Caspar, whose groundbreaking research explores how authority infl...

Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit—and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free.

Amanda’s new book, Free recounts how she survived prison, the mistakes she made and misadventures she had reintegrating into society, culminating in the untold story of h...

Albert Einstein remains renowned around the world for revolutionizing our understanding of the cosmos, but very few realize that the celebrated scientist had a deep spiritual side. Einstein believed that one wondrous force was woven through all things everywhere—and this sense of the pervasive sacred influenced every aspect of his existence, from his marvelous science to his passionate pacifism.

Kieran Fox studied medicine at Stanf...

Outside of the academics and activists whose ideology came to dominate the West in the second decade of the twenty-first century, arguably no group influenced public discourse as much as the Intellectual Dark Web.

Challenging the intellectual and cultural orthodoxies that engulfed universities, the media, and big tech, this group—a loose collective of politically diverse intellectuals, commentators, and scholars critical of politic...

In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst, and violence.

Matt Ridley revisits Darwin’s revelatory theory of mate choice through the close study of the peculiar rituals of birds, and considers how this mating process complicates our own view of human evolution.

Ridley also explores the scientific researc...