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 b...

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 intellige...

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 proces...

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, ...

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...

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 ...

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 an...

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 ...

How much of what we call "basic morality" is actually inherited from Christianity? Bart Ehrman joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the biggest moral questions in history: why do we feel obligated to care for strangers at all?

Drawing from his new book Love Thy Stranger, Ehrman argues that the idea of helping people outside your tribe, family, or nation was not a moral given in the ancient world. Greek...

Michael Shermer sits down with novelist and essayist Lionel Shriver for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens when old political labels stop making sense. Shriver reflects on the strange moral and political confusions that now shape debates over immigration, identity, religion, and the meaning of tolerance. 

They discuss why immigration has become, in Shriver's view, the central political issue of this century; why support...

Zion Lights used to be deep inside the environmental movement: protests, arrests, road blockades, the whole thing. Then she started looking closely at the evidence around nuclear power and found that much of what she'd been told about energy, risk, and climate solutions didn't hold up.

In this conversation with Michael Shermer, she explains why anti-nuclear politics has done real damage, and why reliable energy matters far beyond m...

Jeremy Jones joins Michael Shermer to talk about DOGE AI, government fraud, and the strange reality that some of the biggest problems in public life are both widely known and somehow never fixed. Jones explains how his team uses AI to sort through enormous government datasets, isolate suspicious billing patterns, and surface waste at a scale that would be almost impossible to catch by hand.

They also get into Jones's own background...

Why do some world-changing ideas get ignored, attacked, or buried for years before anyone takes them seriously?

Michael Shermer sits down with The Economist science correspondent Matt Kaplan to discuss the scientists who got there first and paid the price. They talk about why institutions resist new ideas, why careers can depend on defending the status quo, and why being right is often not enough.

They discuss figures like Katalin ...

For decades, developmental psychologist Jay Belsky has focused on one of the biggest questions in human development: how do early experiences shape the lives we go on to live?

In this conversation with Michael Shermer, he explains why childhood adversity can leave deep marks, why some children are far more affected by experience than others, and why averages often hide the most important part of the story. 
 
Belsky revisits the ol...

Publishing likes to imagine itself as a marketplace of ideas with a strong immune system: good arguments win, bad ones fade, and editors act as principled gatekeepers. In practice, it's also an industry with thin margins, status anxiety, and a constant fear of reputational damage.

Adam Szetela argues that a lot of what gets called "cancel culture" in books is better understood as risk management under social media conditions. Outra...

Documentary filmmaker Marcie Hume (BBC alum; Magicians: Life in the Impossible) joins Michael Shermer to talk about her new verité film Corey Feldman vs. the World—shot over a decade, starting in the "Corey's Angels" era and following a tour that unravels in real time.

It goes to some uncomfortable places: how celebrity can create cult-ish dynamics (not just with fans, but with the people working around them as well), how "truth" b...