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2 episodes with science salon podcast
Can Morality be explained without God? Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. Today, he's here to argue that science can explain morality better than God. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia.Visit: https://michaelshermer.com/ and https://www.skeptic.com/
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia.Visit: https://michaelshermer.com/ and https://www.skeptic.com/
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia.
Dr. Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the host of the Science Salon Podcast, joins the show to talk about his work researching conspiracy theories like QAnon and the JFK assassination, what he thinks of UFOs and aliens, and why nuclear energy is so important. Buy Drinkin' Bros new Hard AF Seltzer Here! Get your Drinkin' Bros Merch here! Go to ghostbed.com/drinkinbros and use code DRINKINBROS for 30% off EVERYTHING (Mattresses, Adjustable Base, and more) -- plus a 101 Night Sleep Trial and Mattresses Made in the USA! Get a free indoor security camera plus 20% off, Go to SIMPLISAFE.com/americanparty.
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia. Visit: https://michaelshermer.com/ and https://www.skeptic.com/ For Your Listening Pleasure all the radio shows available on The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network with our compliments, visit - https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv. Our radio shows archives and programming include: A Different Perspective with Kevin Randle; Alien Cosmic Expo Lecture Series; Alien Worlds Radio Show; America's Soul Doctor with Ken Unger; Back in Control Radio Show with Dr. David Hanscom, MD; Connecting with Coincidence with Dr. Bernard Beitman, MD; Dick Tracy; Dimension X; Exploring Tomorrow Radio Show; Flash Gordon; Imagine More Success Radio Show with Syndee Hendricks and Thomas Hydes; Jet Jungle Radio Show; Journey Into Space; Know the Name with Sharon Lynn Wyeth; Lux Radio Theatre - Classic Old Time Radio; Mission Evolution with Gwilda Wiyaka; Paranormal StakeOut with Larry Lawson; Ray Bradbury - Tales Of The Bizarre; Sci Fi Radio Show; Seek Reality with Roberta Grimes; Space Patrol; Stairway to Heaven with Gwilda Wiyaka; The 'X' Zone Radio Show with Rob McConnell; Two Good To Be True with Justina Marsh and Peter Marsh; and many other! That's The ‘X' Zone Broadcast Network Shows and Archives - https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv *** AND NOW *** The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.com The ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewspaper.com
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia.Visit: https://michaelshermer.com/ and https://www.skeptic.com/For Your Listening Pleasure all the radio shows available on The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network with our compliments, visit - https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv.Our radio shows archives and programming include: A Different Perspective with Kevin Randle; Alien Cosmic Expo Lecture Series; Alien Worlds Radio Show; America's Soul Doctor with Ken Unger; Back in Control Radio Show with Dr. David Hanscom, MD; Connecting with Coincidence with Dr. Bernard Beitman, MD; Dick Tracy; Dimension X; Exploring Tomorrow Radio Show; Flash Gordon; Imagine More Success Radio Show with Syndee Hendricks and Thomas Hydes; Jet Jungle Radio Show; Journey Into Space; Know the Name with Sharon Lynn Wyeth; Lux Radio Theatre - Classic Old Time Radio; Mission Evolution with Gwilda Wiyaka; Paranormal StakeOut with Larry Lawson; Ray Bradbury - Tales Of The Bizarre; Sci Fi Radio Show; Seek Reality with Roberta Grimes; Space Patrol; Stairway to Heaven with Gwilda Wiyaka; The 'X' Zone Radio Show with Rob McConnell; Two Good To Be True with Justina Marsh and Peter Marsh; and many other!That's The ‘X' Zone Broadcast Network Shows and Archives - https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv*** AND NOW ***The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.comThe ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewspaper.com
Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the "Science Salon Podcast," and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. A prolific writer, his most recent book is the 2020 "Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist."
Today I’m speaking with Dr. Michael Shermer. Michael has been on the Joe Rogan podcast multiple times, is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is also a New York Times best-selling author of such books as Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain.I invited Michael on because I wanted to hear from a professional skeptic how to think critically so we get closer to the truth, which is what this entire podcast is all about. In this interview he shared techniques to avoid our brain tricking us into believing things that aren’t true, what Michael believes that many skeptics don’t, his take on UFO’s in light of government released video footage, how to improve our personality traits, how in the world birds could evolve wings, and much more....I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what you like about the podcast, what you don’t, ideas for future guests, etc:Email: truthjunkiepodcastwithkevin@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/truthjunkiepodcastYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIma3aXx3l6UfjvTNM2Bg2A...Links to resources Michael mentioned:Not Born Yesterday by Hugo MercierRapoport’s Rules of Debate (Wiki) Intelligence Squared Debates: Unf*ckology by Amy Alkon Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko WillinkThe Language Of God by Francis CollinsThe Parasitic Mind by Gad SaadContents[4:14]- Michael shares techniques to avoid our brain tricking us into believing things that aren't true.[9:52]- Suggesting real high-level, civilized debate platforms.[15:28]- Bill Eddy and his book "Why we elect sociopaths and narcissists".[24:39]- Sharing current views about UFO's[31:08]-Explaining capitalism and how poverty can be minimized in the world.[39:36]-Sharing personal experiences with UFO's/Alien abductions[44:49]-Bringing an end to psychosis, depression, suicide, violence, conflict, and war.[50:58]-Motivation should be given to the people who are feeling low in their life[57:28]- Discussing ancient hominid
“All culture is appropriation. No culture invents their culture and says ‘this is ours’ and silos it off from everybody else. Everybody borrows everything." Science historian and best-selling writer Michael Shermer is here. Free speech and free expression have been on his mind lately, and that’s what occupies a lot of the conversation. What’s happening with free speech and campus culture? What is the border between “protected speech” and "acceptable speech?” In addition to discussing Michael’s ten commandments of free speech, he and Daniel also talk about Darwin, and why, for Michael, he is the scientist that fascinates him most. Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His new book is Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Follow @michaelshermer. Michael regularly contributes opinion editorials, essays, and reviews to: the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Science, Nature, and other publications. He wrote 214 consecutive monthly columns for Scientific American. He appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Oprah, and Larry King Live (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!). He has been interviewed in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel. Dr. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown. His two TED talks, seen by millions, were voted in the top 100. -------------------------------------- Please consider supporting Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk via our Patreon: patreon.com/talkingbeats In addition to early episode access, bonus episodes, and other benefits, you will contribute to us being able to present the highest quality substantive, long-form interviews with the world's most compelling people. We believe that providing a platform for individual expression, free thought, and a diverse array of views is more important now than ever.
In this special episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer catches up with Douglas Murray one year after the publication of his bestselling book The Madness of Crowds, which was featured in Science Salon # 87 in October 2019. Murray’s book is now out in paperback with an Afterword update on all that has happened the past year, one of the most momentous in living memory. Shermer and Murray discuss: why he wasn’t “cancelled” after The Madness of Crowds was published and became a bestseller, what people should do if they’re cancelled, shamed, mobbed, or accused of being racist, misogynist, transphobic, or bigoted and they know they’re not, how to fight back against wokeness, political correctness, and identity politics, updates on the featured topics in The Madness of Crowds: gay, women, race, trans, J.K. Rowling and “people who menstruate” (if only there was a single word for that phrase), statues and why some people want them taken down (Lord Nelson may be next…find out why), why leftists think everyone (except them) are racists and why they’re really making these accusations, why we should be suspect of the motives of social justice warriors (who are anti-social, against justice, and not warriors), Michael Brown, George Floyd, and police violence, white fragility, white guilt, BLM, and anti-racism, corporate sensitivity training programs and why they’re really being conducted, what could happen after the 2020 election, depending on who wins, and comparing 2020 to 1968, and what the future holds for Western culture. In The Madness of Crowds Douglas Murray investigates the dangers of “woke” culture and the rise of identity politics. In lively, razor-sharp prose he examines the most controversial issues of our moment: sexuality, gender, technology and race, with interludes on the Marxist foundations of “wokeness”, the impact of tech and how, in an increasingly online culture, we must relearn the ability to forgive. One of the few writers who dares to counter the prevailing view and question the dramatic changes in our society — from gender reassignment for children to the impact of transgender rights on women — Murray’s penetrating book clears a path of sanity through the fog of our modern predicament. Douglas Murray is a regular columnist for both the Spectator and Standpoint and writes frequently for a variety of other publications, including the Sunday Times and Wall Street Journal. A prolific debater, Douglas has spoken on a variety of prominent platforms, including at the British and European Parliaments and the White House.
Conspiracy theories are all crazy, right? Well, maybe not. There’s some history as to why so many people believe in them. What we really need is a conspiracy theory detection kit and that’s what we have in today’s episode. Our guest today is Dr. Michael Shermer. Dr. Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a presidential fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Why People Believe Weird Things and his latest book is Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Show Notes: [1:40] - Dr. Shermer’s magazine is called Skeptic Magazine which is devoted to teaching critical thinking skepticism and scientific reasoning. [2:03] - None of us are omniscient. We can’t know anything with certainty. Most of the decisions we make in life are made with uncertainty. So how best should we best make decisions? [2:39] - For centuries, we have developed methods, tools, and technology to help us with this problem of uncertainty. [4:47] - Finding the cause of something has many variables and once you start getting into economics and politics, things get messy. [5:50] - It is important to separate the correlation between seemingly cause and effect relationships. Dr. Shermer uses the fraudulent connection between vaccines and autism to demonstrate. [7:48] - The curse of knowledge is the Hindsight Bias. After the fact, it is clear what should have been done, but at the time it wasn’t clear. Dr. Shermer shares several great historical events as examples of this. [9:27] - There’s let something happen on purpose and make something happen on purpose and it is unfair to place blame on others using the Hindsight Bias. [11:40] - There is a difference between conspiracy and conspiracy theory. A conspiracy is something that actually happened and a conspiracy theory is the idea that there is something that is happening. [12:08] - The main reason people believe conspiracy theories are true is because many shocking conspiracies have actually happened. They are not so far out of the realm of possibility. [12:55] - It is not completely crazy to think that something will happen because historically something similar has happened. Dr. Shermer uses examples from the Kennedy administration. [14:49] - Another reason people are quick to believe conspiracy theories is because of the messiness of the world. Our brains are wired to try to simplify things. [15:39] - Money is a proxy for power and a lot of people believe that these people who have power are actually more powerful than they are. For example, Bill Gates is the center of some conspiracy theories, but in reality, what power does he actually have? [16:10] - This is not unreasonable for people to believe because there have been powerful people with money who have rigged the system. [16:58] - It is easier to believe that horrific things that happen in the world are controlled by a small group of people. This is an example of the human brain trying to simplify things. [17:17] - The fact is, nobody is running the world. And in a way, that is scary. [18:27] - The more people that have to be involved, the less likely the conspiracy is true. People don’t typically keep secrets and have big mouths. [19:56] - Dr. Shermer uses a 9/11 conspiracy theory as an example of how crazy the theory sounds due to its complexity. [21:05] - Some conspiracy theories are harmless, but many can be harmful. [22:40] - An example of a dangerous conspiracy theory is the one surrounding Hitler’s rise to power. Hitler’s initial platform was spreading the conspiracy theory that the only reason they lost the first world war was because they were stabbed in the back by the Jewish community. [23:25] - People are very confused about the term freedom. You have to give up certain freedoms for security. [24:54] - The United States and Italy are examples of countries with a loose culture. This means that they are not rigidly following guidelines and the spread of COVID-19 is rapid in nations like this. [27:12] - Chris and Dr. Shermer discuss the title of Dr. Shermer’s new book Giving the Devil His Due which was inspired by the play A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt. [29:12] - The book is a series of essays on the theme of free speech. [29:27] - The only way to make sure you haven’t gone off the rails and believe things that aren’t true is to interact with people who think differently from you. This gets you out of a bubble and gives you a better ability to make your own decisions and form your own opinions. [29:58] - Dr. Shermer is concerned about the lack of diversity in ideas and opinions within politics. [31:00] - The new book has had mostly positive reviews. [32:12] - Even scientists need critical review. This helps us determine if we should be skeptical. [33:27] - It is important to know and understand the arguments behind a differing opinion from your own. [35:04] - Dr. Shermer predicts that there will be many changes and feels that this is not always a bad thing. Some changes will be good and bad. [38:01] - Dr. Shermer offers tons of free content on his website and also offers courses for more information. You can find them in the links and resources. Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review. Links and Resources: Podcast Web Page Facebook Page whatismyipaddress.com Easy Prey on Instagram Easy Prey on Twitter Easy Prey on LinkedIn Easy Prey on YouTube Easy Prey on Pinterest Michael Shermer Web Page Skeptic Salon Podcast Skeptic Magazine Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist by Michael Shermer Michael Shermer on Facebook Michael Shermer on Twitter Skeptic Magazine on YouTube
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His new book is Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Learn more: https://michaelshermer.com/
Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning with a monolithic industry. Pharma introduces brilliant scientists, incorruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company executives often blinded by greed. A business that profits from treating ills can create far deadlier problems than it cures. Addictive products are part of the industry’s DNA, from the days when corner drugstores sold morphine, heroin, and cocaine, to the past two decades of dangerously overprescribed opioids. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America’s wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis. Pharma reveals how and why American drug companies have put earnings ahead of patients. Shermer and Posner also discuss: how Big Pharma companies conspire to hack the FDA regulations, parsing responsibility for the Opioid crisis between manufacturers, distributors, doctors, and patients, the physiology of addiction and dependency, how Arthur Sackler went from liberal do-gooder to greedy capitalist, the polio vaccine and patenting the sun, how valium and anti-depressants were marketed to men and women differently, how the AIDS cocktail was developed, how Viagra® was discovered, why patents and intellectual property rights do not lead to more innovation, the prospects for a COVID-19 vaccine, the current state of the opioid crisis and how to stem it. Gerald Posner is an award-winning journalist who has written twelve books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK and multiple national bestsellers. His 2015 book, God’s Bankers, a two-hundred-year history of the finances of the Vatican, was an acclaimed New York Timesbestseller. Posner has written for many national magazines and papers, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Time, and he has been a regular contributor to NBC, the History Channel, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, and FOX News. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, author Trisha Posner. Listen to the Science Salon Podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.
I chat with Dr. Michael Shermer about his latest book "Giving the Devil his Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist". You can buy the book here https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B084671HC7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5 If you want to learn more about Skeptic visit https://www.skeptic.com/ You can support the Science Salon Podcast https://www.skeptic.com/donate/ You can Follow Dr. Shermer on Twitter @michaelshermer You can follow me on Twitter @kushal_mehra You can support the Carvaka Podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/carvaka You can become a member of The Carvaka Podcast on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKPxuul6zSLAfKSsm123Vww/join You can follow me on Facebook @KushalMehraOfficial
Karen Douglas, professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, and Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University–share their research, thoughts, and reactions on conspiracy theories and how they specifically relate to COVID-19.
Brian Keating Interviews Skeptic Magazine publisher and author of “Giving The Devil His Due” Michael Shermer. Get Michael Shermer’s Books here: GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE HEAVENS ON EARTH THE MORAL ARC: Find Show Notes and Links here Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His new book is Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Follow Michael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelshermer and Brian Keating here: https://twitter.com/drbriankeating Michael regularly contributes opinion editorials, essays, and reviews to: the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Science, Nature, and other publications. He wrote 214 consecutive monthly columns for Scientific American. He appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Oprah, and Larry King Live (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!). He has been interviewed in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel. Dr. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown. His two TED talks, seen by millions, were voted in the top 100. Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University. He has been a college professor since 1979, also teaching at Occidental College, Glendale College, and Claremont Graduate University, where he taught a transdisciplinary course for Ph.D. students on Evolution, Economics, and the Brain. Watch Michael Shermer discuss Losing the Nobel Prize with Brian Keating on SCIENCE SALON # 70 Topics discussed in this extended interview include: M Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Brian Keating Interviews Skeptic Magazine publisher and author of "Giving The Devil His Due" Michael Shermer. Get Michael Shermer's Books here: GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE HEAVENS ON EARTH THE MORAL ARC: Find Show Notes and Links here Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His new book is Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Follow Michael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelshermer and Brian Keating here: https://twitter.com/drbriankeating Michael regularly contributes opinion editorials, essays, and reviews to: the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Science, Nature, and other publications. He wrote 214 consecutive monthly columns for Scientific American. He appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Oprah, and Larry King Live (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!). He has been interviewed in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel. Dr. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown. His two TED talks, seen by millions, were voted in the top 100. Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University. He has been a college professor since 1979, also teaching at Occidental College, Glendale College, and Claremont Graduate University, where he taught a transdisciplinary course for Ph.D. students on Evolution, Economics, and the Brain.
Michael Shermer (Skeptic Magazine, Science Salon Podcast, Scientific American) dropped by before quarantine went into effect to discuss skepticism, religion, debunking conspiracy theories, scientific attempts to achieve immortality, and why “I don’t know” are the three most powerful words you can utter. He and Bridget cover everything from why neither one of them would want […]Join the conversation and comment on this podcast episode: https://ricochet.com/podcast/walk-ins-welcome-bridget-phetasy/michael-shermer-believes-most-of-us-are-wrong-about-most-things/.Now become a Ricochet member for only $5.00 a month! Join and see what you’ve been missing: https://ricochet.com/membership/.Subscribe to Walk-Ins Welcome w/ Bridget Phetasy in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Michael Shermer (Skeptic Magazine, Science Salon Podcast, Scientific American) dropped by before quarantine went into effect to discuss skepticism, religion, debunking conspiracy theories, scientific attempts to achieve immortality, and why “I don’t know” are the three most powerful words you can utter. He and Bridget cover everything from why neither one of them would want to live forever, to why Heaven sounds really boring, how liberals used to be the defenders of free speech and when it all changed, pluralistic ignorance, censorship, hate speech, thought crimes, and why open debate is the only way to find out what’s actually true. Don’t miss Michael’s new book Giving the Devil His Due, available now! Full transcript available here: WiW74-MichaelShermer-Transcript
Up next on Way of the Renaissance Man, learning how to view the world with healthy skepticism. It’s also about engaging the world with an objective, scientific mindset that is always skeptical of truth claims that don’t pass rigorous intellectual muster. Welcome to the Way the Renaissance Man podcast. This is a show about ideas, personal empowerment, and celebrating the rational life. Our goal is to help each other discover the tools needed to better focus our minds, integrate our thoughts with actions, and live the lives we really want with your host Jim Woods. This season, I will continue speaking with many more interesting Renaissance Men, and Women, who can help us identify, understand and assimilate the key ingredients essential to constructing a life well lived. Who's On: Today’s guest is Michael Shermer, our final FreedomFest interview. What's Discussed: Helping the world see things from that perspective is Michael Shermer, Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. In addition to being the world’s point man in the battle to cultivate healthy scientific skepticism, Michael also spent more than a decade as a professional bicycle racer, which basically vaults him directly into Renaissance Man status. In this episode, Michael tells us about how he created his “non-traditional career” as a writer, publisher, and critical thinking advocate. Jim and Michael also discuss the history of science, the rise of postmodernist thinking, the current assault on truth, the changing nature of politics, and the downside of using labels to categorize people. Jim has been a long-time admirer of Michael Shermer’s work, and in this episode, you’ll discover why. And now, here’s Jim’s conversation with Michael Shermer. Learn More with Links: Michael Shermer's Website: Skeptic.com FreedomFest Website: https://www.freedomfest.com/ JIM WOODS' WEBSITES: Jim Woods Investing http://WayoftheRenaissanceMan.com Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.
Michael Shermer talks with the polymathic polyamorous sapiosexual classically liberal evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller about: virtue signaling and why we all do it how the phrase “virtue signaling” became a derogatory political meme how virtue signaling really works and why it is not a bad thing why evolutionary psychology is not based on “just so” story telling how multiple traits can be selected at once individual selection vs. group selection the role of virtue signaling in the evolution of the moral sentiments how virtue signaling helps produce real morality (and not just fake altruism) abortion, immigration, Trump, the Far Right, the Far Left, and other topical controversies gender differences in career preferences neurodiversity and speech codes cultural diversity and the Harvard lawsuit over discrimination why social groups tend to splinter and defenestrate members who are not virtuous enough. Geoffrey Miller is a tenured evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico. He’s been writing and teaching about the origins and functions of moral virtues for decades. His previous books include The Mating Mind, Spent, Mating Intelligence, and What Women Want. He got his B.A. from Columbia University, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He’s also worked at NYU Stern Business School, UCLA, University College London, and the London School of Economics. He has over 110 publications about sexual selection, mate choice, signaling theory, fitness indicators, consumer behavior, marketing, intelligence, creativity, language, art, music, humor, emotions, personality, psychopathology, and behavior genetics. He has also given 200 talks in 16 countries, and his research has been featured in Nature, Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Scientist, and The Economist, on NPR and BBC radio, and in documentaries on CNN, PBS, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and BBC. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia.Visit: https://michaelshermer.com/ and https://www.skeptic.com/
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia.Visit: https://michaelshermer.com/ and https://www.skeptic.com/
If ever there was an urgent need for a frank understanding of what’s going on with men, it is now. Male rage and frustration have driven resurgent populism, mass shootings, and epidemics of addiction and violence. Powerful men who have abused their positions for decades have been and are being #MeToo-outed and dismissed. The patriarchy, that solid bedrock of male power for thousands of years, seems to be crumbling. In Future Man, with his characteristic intelligence and humor, Tim Samuels assesses the state of contemporary manhood, its conflicts, confusions, and challenges. Trapped in bodies barely changed since cavemen days, men are contending with the stresses of corporate culture, lifelong commitment, rampant depression, and crazy expectations to be successful at work and at home. But how can you hunt and gather in an open-plan office? Why do men make up to 95 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs yet 93 percent of the prison population? Why do men commit suicide at more than three times the rate of women? Shermer and Samuels discuss: why it’s time for men to listen to women why it is also time for women to listen to (non-toxic) men why the treatment of women and men is not zero-sum fatherhood violence and how to curb it war and what it does to men porn and the problems it causes why men need sports mental health toxic masculinity gender roles divorce, child custody, alimony, and spousal support. Tim Samuels is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, broadcaster, and journalist. He won three Royal Television Society awards and best documentary at the World Television Festival as well as the “Making a Difference” award at the Mind Media Awards for his work on mental health. He created the BBC Radio 5 call-in show Men’s Hour and has been a host for eight years. He recently became a correspondent for National Geographic Channel’s Explorer, based out of New York, and he contributes to such US publications as GQ, New York Times Magazine, and Huffington Post. He lives in London. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this wide-ranging conversation James Traub and Michael Shermer discuss: the changing meaning of “liberalism” over the centuries and decades why the first liberals were deeply skeptical of majority rule how, by the second half of the 20th century, liberalism become the national creed of the most powerful country in the world why this consensus did not last the giants of liberalism: James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Isiah Berlin Karl Popper, the Open Society, and the paradox of tolerance (that tolerating intolerance is self-defeating) Donald Trump as the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt illiberalism in the UK, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Germany why liberalism lost the support it once enjoyed the intolerance of the illiberal left, identity politics, and political correctness what a potential future for liberalism would look like. James Traub has spent the last forty years as a journalist for American’s leading publications, including the New Yorker and the New York Times magazine. He now teaches foreign policy and intellectual history at New York University and at NYU Abu Dhabi, and is a columnist and contributor at Foreign Policy. He is the author of six previous books on foreign and domestic affairs. His most recent work is John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit. He lives in New York City. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
World renowned biological anthropologist Mel Konner examines the nature of human nature, including and especially in his new book the nature of religiosity. In Believers, Konner, who was raised in an orthodox Jewish home but has been an atheist his entire adult life, responds to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers, most notably the “new atheists” Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens―known for writing about religion as something irrational and ultimately harmful. Konner explores the psychology, development, brain science, evolution, and even genetics of the varied religious impulses we experience as a species. Konner and Shermer discuss: the nature of human nature what is religion? what is faith? is religion and faith adaptive or the byproduct of some other evolved adaptation? his experience living among hunter-gatherers how hunter-gatherers conceive of religion vs. modern peoples the “Big Gods” theory of religion the “God Module” theory of religion the group selection theory of religion why faith is not for everyone the rise of the nones, but why religion will never completely die out the upside of religion … and the downside were our paleolithic ancestors warlike or peaceful? would you want to switch places and live in a hunter-gatherer society? why for at least a large minority of humanity, the belief in things unseen neither can nor should go away. Melvin Konner, MD, is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. He is the author of Believers, Women After All, Becoming a Doctor, and The Tangled Wing, among other books. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In 12 fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Richard Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer — the improbability and beauty of the “bottom-up programming” that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings — and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions. In this wide-ranging conversation Shermer and Dawkins discuss: how Outgrowing God encapsulates his life’s work in two broad areas: (1) science, reason, and evolution theory; (2) God, Religion, and Faith. A “Dawkins 101” book and a perfect gift to friends and family. his commitment to the truth, as best explained by science. Is the Bible a “Good Book”? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? why religion is over-determined separating religion from God beliefs Is religion and belief in God an evolutionary adaptation or a byproduct (or both)? Why we don’t need God in order to be good How do we decide what is good? human nature: selfish/selfless, violent/peaceful, better angels/inner demons breaching the Is-Ought barrier the future of atheism career advice for young scientists and scholars getting courage from science the multiverse: “You Cannot be Serious!” Richard Dawkins is a fellow of the Royal Society and was the inaugural holder of the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, The Magic of Reality, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor’s Tale, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Science in the Soul. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Royal Society of Literature Award, the Michael Faraday Prize of the Royal Society, the Kistler Prize, the Shakespeare Prize, the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award, and the International Cosmos Prize of Japan. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In his book Extraterrestrial Languages, Daniel Oberhaus leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication. Exploring Earthlings’ various attempts to reach out to non-Earthlings over the centuries, he poses some not entirely answerable questions. If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand? What languages will they (and we) speak? If we can’t even communicate with dolphins and whales, which are mammals, or chimpanzees and gorillas, which are primates, how are we going to communicate with sentient beings that evolved on another planet? If we want to send a message to far-future humans to, say, warn them not to open a container of radioactive waste from a nuclear plant, what would we put on the container to communicate the danger within? Is there not only a universal grammar (as Noam Chomsky has posited), but also a grammar of the universe? In this incredibly fascinating conversation Shermer and Oberhaus also discuss: the late-19th-century idea to communicate with Martians via Morse code and mirrors the emergence in the 20th century of SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence), and finally METI (messaging extraterrestrial intelligence) the one-way space voyage of Ella, an artificial intelligence agent that can play cards, tell fortunes, and recite poetry different media used in attempts at extraterrestrial communication, from microwave systems to plaques on spacecrafts to formal logic, and our attempts to formulate a language for our message, including the Astraglossa and two generations of Lincos (lingua cosmica) how philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, science, and art have informed the design or limited the effectiveness of our interstellar messaging. Daniel Oberhaus is a science and technology journalist whose work has appeared in Wired, the Atlantic, Popular Mechanics, Slate, the Baffler, Nautilus, Vice, the Awl, and other publications. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In his devastating new book The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray examines the 21st century’s most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality. We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal — and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting. Readers of all political persuasions cannot afford to ignore Murray’s masterfully argued and fiercely provocative book, in which he seeks to inject some sense into the discussion around this generation’s most complicated issues. He ends with an impassioned call for free speech, shared common values and sanity in an age of mass hysteria. Shermer and Murray discuss: gay: born this way? race: why current attitudes are an inversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream gender: is it really all about power? Men and women in the workplace trans: how big an issue is this and how many trans people are there? Reversing trans surgeries the problem of intersectionality, or the oppression olympics campus craziness: how big a problem is it really? political correctness and free speech the problem of “overcorrection” in moral progress, and the way forward. Douglas Murray is an author and journalist based in Britain. His previous book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, was a No. 1 bestseller in non-fiction. Murray has been a contributor to the Spectator since 2000 and has been Associate Editor at the magazine since 2012. He has also written regularly for numerous other outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun, Evening Standard and the New Criterion. He is a regular contributor to National Review and has been a columnist for Standpoint magazine since its founding. Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world’s largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by revealing his correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 101 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator. Tyson’s 2017 bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Tyson’s most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson’s quest to explore our place in the cosmos. Shermer and Tyson discuss: killing Pluto killing God science and religion why he takes a relatively conciliatory approach to religion why he takes a hard-line against science deniers in religion (and elsewhere) progress in science how vs. why questions race and racial progress why the arc of the moral universe still bends toward justice race and IQ and the curious letter he received about how to address this sensitive subject his middle name and why one correspondent objected to it Neil’s father and why he ends the book with a eulogy. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this conversation long-time adversaries and now friends Michael Shermer and Deepak Chopra make an attempt at mutual understanding through the careful unpacking of what Deepak means when he talks about the subject-object split, the impermanence of the self, nondualism, the mind-body problem, the nature of consciousness, and the nature of reality. Shermer also pushes Deepak to translate these deep philosophical, metaphysical, and psychological concepts into actionable take-home ideas that can be put to use to reduce human suffering and help people lead lives that are more meaningful and purposeful. In the book Deepak includes a survey called Nondual Embodiment Thematic Inventory (NETI), final scores of which range from 20 to 100, on “how people rank themselves on qualities long considered spiritual, psychological, or moral.” Shermer scored a 62, which Chopra said is “not bad”. Take the test yourself in the book or Google it online to read more about it. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this fascinating discussion of one of the hardest problems in all of science — the hard problem of consciousness, that is, explaining how the feeling or experience of something can arise from neural activity — one of the world’s leading neuroscientists Christof Koch argues that consciousness, more widespread than previously assumed, is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack. Consciousness is experience. Consciousness is, as his book title states, The Feeling of Life Itself — the feeling of being alive. Shermer and Koch discuss: the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) where consciousness is located in the brain (or, more precisely, where it is not located) what comas and vegetative states teach us about consciousness what brain injuries and diseases teach us about consciousness what hallucinogens teach us about consciousness what split-brain surgeries teach us about the nature of the self and identity Koch’s experience with psilocybin and what he learned about consciousness Koch’s experience in a flotation tank and what he learned about consciousness why computers as they are currently configured can never create consciousness why mind-uploading cannot copy or continue consciousness Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness why consciousness is not an illusion, and mysterian mysteries. Christof Koch is President and Chief Scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, following twenty-seven years as a Professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (MIT Press), The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, and other books. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you’re online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall — or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative — dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair trigger. In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation — whether the issue is climate change, religious faith, gender identity, race, poverty, immigration, or gun control. Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. Shermer and Boghossian discuss: the growing political divide in American over the past quarter century why politicians no longer reach across the aisle when is the right time to have a difficult conversation the best strategies to use to diffuse anger and keep a conversation productive why the atheist movement splintered over disagreements strategies used by hostage negotiators that you can employ in your conversations, and negotiating the intractable social media. Peter Boghossian is a full time faculty member in the philosophy department at Portland State University and an affiliated faculty member at Oregon Health Science University in the Division of General Internal Medicine. He is a national speaker for the Center of Inquiry and an international speaker for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others. By deconstructing religious arguments for God-based morality and guiding readers through the premises and promises of secular morality, Zuckerman argues that the major challenges facing the world today―from global warming and growing inequality to religious support for unethical political policies to gun violence and terrorism―are best approached from a nonreligious ethical framework. In short, we need to look to our fellow humans and within ourselves for moral progress and ethical action. Shermer and Zuckerman discus: what is morality and what does it mean to be good? the evolutionary origins of morality the “naturalistic fallacy,” or the “is-ought fallacy” and why it need not always apply how we’ve made moral progress over the centuries thanks to secular forces why religion is always behind the wave of moral progress (but takes credit for it later) the origin of good and evil how to solve crime, homelessness, and other social problems through science, reason, and secular forces, and the seven secular virtues. Dr. Phil Zuckerman is the author of several books, including The Nonreligious, Living the Secular Life, Society without God, and his latest book, What it Means to be Moral. He is a professor of sociology at Pitzer College and the founding chair of the nation’s first secular studies program. He lives in Claremont, California, with his wife and three children. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
You may not believe it, but there is a link between our current political instability and your childhood attachment to teddy bears. There’s also a reason why children in Asia are more likely to share than their western counterparts and why the poor spend more of their income on luxury goods than the rich. Or why your mother is more likely to leave her money to you than your father. What connects these things? The answer is our need for ownership. Award-winning University of Bristol psychologist Bruce Hood draws on research from his own lab and others around the world to explain why this uniquely human preoccupation governs our behavior from the cradle to the grave, even when it is often irrational, and destructive. What motivates us to buy more than we need? Is it innate, or cultural? How does our urge to acquire control our behaviour, even the way we vote? And what can we do about it? Possessed is the first book to explore how ownership has us enthralled in relentless pursuit of a false happiness, with damaging consequences for society and the planet — and how we can stop buying into it. Dr. Hood and Dr. Shermer also discuss: who owns your body and mind how the military draft, conscription, is a way of the state taking possession of your body suicide and bodily ownership: why states prohibit you from killing yourself organs and bodily ownership: why states prohibit you from selling your organs prostitution: why states prohibit people from selling their bodies for sex slavery: why historically states have legalized owning other people marriage & children: why historically states have sanctioned men owning women and children children’s sense of ownership income inequality objects vs. money vs. social capital as possessions money is not a possession so much as a means of getting possessions. jealousy as a form of possession xenophobia as a fear of loss of ownership who owns the land, air, water, minerals, etc.? intellectual Property: who owns your ideas? what wills and trusts tell us about the psychology of the transfer of ownership the tragedy of the commons and environmental protection through private ownership: Ducks Unlimited, game reserves, licenses for killing big game in Africa why original art is more valuable than fakes or duplicates, and the Arab-Israel conflict and what happens when God ordains ownership of a piece of land to two different peoples. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable—and inevitable—end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, 15-year veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race. Walsh and Shermer discuss these existential threats to humanity and what to do about them: nuclear weapons killer diseases climate change artificial intelligence biotechnology asteroids and volcanos extraterrestrials, and preparing for doomsday: should we all be doomsday preppers? A graduate of Princeton University, Bryan Walsh worked as a foreign correspondent, reporter, and editor for TIME for over 15 years. He founded the award-winning Ecocentric blog on TIME.com and has reported from more than 20 countries on science and environmental stories like SARS, global warming, and extinction. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and son. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is out of place at institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. In his tenure at Yale, Anthony Kronman has watched students march across campus to protest the names of buildings and seen colleagues resign over emails about Halloween costumes. He is no stranger to recent confrontations at American universities. But where many see only the suppression of free speech, the babying of students, and the drive to bury the imperfect parts of our history, Kronman recognizes in these on-campus clashes a threat to our democracy. Shermer and Kronman discuss: free speech vs. hate speech how language effects how we think about other people diversity of characteristics (race, gender) vs. diversity of viewpoints the search for universal truths vs. understanding other’s perspectives affirmative action in the academy: from the University of California to Harvard taking down statues of Hitler and Stalin vs. taking down statues of Confederate Generals the problem of applying current moral values to the past, and how to reform the academy to refocus on excellence. Anthony T. Kronman served as the dean of Yale Law School from 1994–2004, and has taught at the university for forty years. He is the author or coauthor of five books, including The Assault on American Excellence; Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life; and Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In his new book, The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, the U.C. Irvine cognitive scientist Dr. Donald Hoffman challenges the leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. His evolutionary model contends that natural selection has favored perception that hides the truth and guides us toward useful action, shaping our senses to keep us alive and reproducing. We observe a speeding car and do not walk in front of it; we see mold growing on bread and do not eat it. These impressions, though, are not objective reality. Just like a file icon on a desktop screen is a useful symbol rather than a genuine representation of what a computer file looks like, the objects we see every day are merely icons, allowing us to navigate the world safely and with ease. The real-world implications for this discovery are huge, even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality. The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see. In this conversation, Hoffman and Shermer get deep into the weeds of: the nature of reality (ontology) how we know anything about reality (epistemology) the possibility that we’re living in a simulation the possibility that we’re just a brain in a vat the problem of other minds (that I’m the only sentient conscious being while everyone else is a zombie) the hard problem of consciousness what it means to ask “what’s it like to be a bat?” does the moon exist if there are no conscious sentient beings anywhere in the universe? is spacetime doomed? quantum physics and consciousness the microtubule theory of consciousness the global workspace theory of consciousness, and how Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception differs from Jordan Peterson’s Archetypal Theory of Truth (Shermer’s label for Peterson’s evolutionary theory of truth). Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this engaging conversation on the nature of science, Dr. McIntyre and Dr. Shermer get deep into the weeds of where to draw the line between science and pseudoscience. It may seem obvious when you see it (like Justice Potter’s definition of pornography — “I know it when I see it”), from a philosophical perspective it isn’t at all easy to articulate a formula for science that perfectly weeds out all incorrect or fraudulent scientific claims while still retaining true scientific claims. It really comes down to what Dr. McIntyre describes as a “scientific attitude” in an emphasis on evidence and scientists’ willingness to change theories on the basis of new evidence. For example, claims that climate change isn’t settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians’ rhetorical repertoire. In this podcast, and in more detail in his book, McIntyre provides listeners and readers with answers to these challenges to science, and in the process shows how science really works. McIntyre and Shermer also discuss: the strengths and weaknesses of Karl Popper’s “falsification” criteria for the line of demarcation how conspiracy theorists draw their own line of demarcation between their version of the conspiracy vs. that of others within their own community the problem of anomalies that are not explained by the mainstream theory and what to do with them McIntyre’s adventure at the Flat Earth conference Graham Hancock and alternative archaeology Creationists and why they are wrong (and how evolution could be falsified) similarities between Evolution deniers and Holocaust deniers anti-vaxxers and their motives climate deniers and why they’re inappropriately skeptical of climate science, and how to talk to a science denier of any stripe. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
When will the world end? How likely is it that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists? Are we living in a simulation like the Matrix? Is our universe but one in a multiverse? How does Warren Buffett continue to beat the stock market? How much longer will your romance last? In this wide ranging conversation with science writer William Poundstone, answers to these questions, and more, will be provided … or at least considered in the framework of Bayesian analysis. In the 18th century, the British minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes devised a theorem that allowed him to assign probabilities to events that had never happened before. It languished in obscurity for centuries until computers came along and made it easy to crunch the numbers. Now, as the foundation of big data, Bayes’ formula has become a linchpin of the digital economy. But here’s where things get really interesting: Bayes’ theorem can also be used to lay odds on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence; on whether we live in a Matrix-like counterfeit of reality; on the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum theory being correct; and on the biggest question of all: how long will humanity survive? The Doomsday Calculation tells how Silicon Valley’s profitable formula became a controversial pivot of contemporary thought. Drawing on interviews with thought leaders around the globe, it’s the story of a group of intellectual mavericks who are challenging what we thought we knew about our place in the universe. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
On this July 16th, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Michael Shermer speaks with veteran space reporter Charles Fishman who has been writing about NASA and the space program for more than 30 years. In One Giant Leap he delivers an all-new take on the race to the Moon that puts Apollo into a new perspective in American history. Yes, the Apollo astronauts are the well-known and well-deserved public heroes of the race to the Moon. But the astronauts didn’t make the trip possible. It took 410,000 people to make the moon landings achievable. Every hour of spaceflight for Apollo required a million hours of work by scientists, engineers and factory workers on the ground — the equivalent of 10 lifetimes of work back on Earth. Fishman tells the story of the men and women who did the work to get the astronauts, and the country, to the Moon and back. Fishman and Shermer discuss: When President John F. Kennedy rallied the nation to go to the Moon in 1961, the task was impossible. None of the technology or techniques existed to do it. Engineers, scientists and factory workers in every state in the USA created that technology in just 8 years. They invented space travel on a deadline. Apollo is sometimes judged a disappointment because it didn’t usher in the Jetsons-like Space Age we thought it would. Fishman argues that the success of Apollo is the age we live in now — it opened the world to the digital revolution in ways that have never before been appreciated or written about. “The race to the Moon didn’t usher in the Space Age; it ushered in the Digital Age,” he writes. “And that is as valuable a legacy as the imagined Space Age might have been.” Secret tapes JFK made of meetings about space, along with other overlooked information from the Kennedy Administration, indicate that Kennedy himself was losing enthusiasm for the Moon race and the Moon landing by the fall of 1963. Had he not been assassinated, it’s not at all clear that Armstrong and Aldrin would have walked on the Moon in July 1969. The on-board computer for Apollo was the smallest, most flexible, most powerful, most user-friendly computer ever created when it flew the astronauts to the Moon — and it did its mission with less computing power than your microwave oven has today. Much of the most critical work to make the Moon missions possible was done by hand: the spacesuits were sewn by hand; the parachutes were sewn and folded by hand; the computer software was woven by hand; the heatshield was applied by hand, using a specialized version of a caulking gun. The iconic image of astronauts unfurling an American flag on the Moon almost didn’t happen. NASA had not even thought about carrying a flag on the Moon missions until just weeks before the first mission blasted off. Shermer ends by asking Fishman about the reputation of Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who built the mighty Saturn V rocket that took the astronauts to the moon: how can we reconcile his genius and vision with his Nazi past, especially his involvement in the slave labor that built the V-2 rockets that rained death down on England in the final year of the war? Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
The interview starts at 23:30 Dr. Michael Shermer joins us for a chat about the media landscape, free speech and censorship. He is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and author and host of the Science Salon Podcast. We also chat about Coddling of the American Mind, the unfreedom of the press, the cultural immune system, replication crisis in social psychology, his podcast and synchronicity. https://michaelshermer.com/ https://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/science-salon/ In the intro we chat about Darren’s trip to the medicine wheel and Graham read’s some listener emails and some quotes from An end to Upside Down Thinking. See the links below for stuff we chatted about during the show and the intro: https://heterodoxacademy.org/coddling-of-the-american-mind/ https://www.anendtoupsidedownthinking.com/book-bonuses https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Unfreedom-of-the-Press/Mark-R-Levin/9781476773094 Please help support the show…. Grimerica’s DoBeDoBeDo List: Grimerica is fully and solely listener supported. We adhere to the Value for Value model. 0 ads, 0 sponsorships, 0 breaks, 0 portals and links to corporate websites… just many hours of unlimited content for free. Thanks for listening!! https://www.13questionspodcast.com/ Our New Podcast - 13 Questions Join the chat / hangout with a bunch of fellow Grimerican’s www.grimerica.ca/chats 1-403-702-6083Call and leave a voice mail or send us a text Support the show directly http://www.grimerica.ca/support https://www.patreon.com/grimerica GrimericaFM https://s2.radio.co/s053ed3122/listen Check out our next trip/conference/meetup - Contact at the Cabin Leave a review on iTunes and/or Stitcher https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-grimerica-show/id653314424?mt=2# http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-grimerica-show Sign up for our newsletter http://www.grimerica.ca/news Leave a comment, ideas and guest/topic suggestions under any episode or blog http://www.grimerica.ca/ SPAM Graham = and send him your synchronicities, feedback, strange experiences and psychedelic trip reports!! graham@grimerica.com InstaGRAM https://www.instagram.com/the_grimerica_show_podcast/ Tweet Darren https://twitter.com/Grimerica Connect through other platforms: https://www.reddit.com/r/grimerica/ https://gab.ai/Grimerica Purchase swag, with partial proceeds donated to the show www.grimerica.ca/swag Send us a postcard or letter http://www.grimerica.ca/contact/ Thanks to Wayne Darnell for help with the website. http://www.darnelldigitalink.com/ http://www.lostbreadcomic.com/ link to Napolean Duheme's site Felix’s Site sirfelix.bandcamp.com Christmas Carol Video MUSIC Grimerica Theme - Lock & Key A Year - Broke For Free Free Thinkers (Don’t get comfortable) - Sir Felix Ortega II
From a physician and post-traumatic stress disorder specialist comes a nuanced cartography of PTSD, a widely misunderstood yet crushing condition that afflicts millions of Americans. The Unspeakable Mind is the definitive guide for a trauma-burdened age. With profound empathy and meticulous research, Shaili Jain, M.D. — a practicing psychiatrist and PTSD specialist at one of America’s top VA hospitals, trauma scientist at the National Center for PTSD, and a Stanford Professor — shines a long-overdue light on the PTSD epidemic affecting today’s fractured world. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder goes far beyond the horrors of war and is an inescapable part of all our lives. At any given moment, more than six million Americans are suffering with PTSD. Dr. Jain’s groundbreaking work demonstrates the ways this disorder cuts to the heart of life, interfering with one’s capacity to love, create, and work — incapacity brought on by a complex interplay between biology, genetics, and environment. Beyond the struggles of individuals, PTSD has a tangible imprint on our cultures and societies around the world. In this conversation Dr. Shermer and Dr. Jain discuss: the history of PTSD and why no one talked about it after WWI, WWII, and Vietnam, but now we are how Dr. Jain diagnoses PTSD by characteristics presented by a patient how to treat PTSD through Cognitive Behavior Therapy through systematic desensitization the problem of tracking rates of PTSD because of the expanding bin of who is considered a victim of the disorder the difficulty of predicting deaths by suicide the difficulty of predicting who will suffer from PTSD, given the many people who have suffered severe trauma and not developed it why some stress is good for developing resiliency in life, but when too much stress causes harm, and the unseen costs of war. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this important new book, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American, constitutional attorney and scholar at the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), Andrew L. Seidel, begins by explaining what apparently religious language is doing in the Declaration of Independence. Does this prove that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Are the Ten Commandments the basis for American law? What, exactly, was the role of religion in America’s founding? Christian nationalists assert that our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and advocate an agenda based on this popular historical claim. But is this belief true? The Founding Myth answers the question once and for all. Seidel builds his case point by point, comparing the Ten Commandments to the Constitution and contrasting biblical doctrine with America’s founding philosophy, showing that the Bible contradicts the Declaration of Independence’s central tenets. Thoroughly researched, this persuasively argued and fascinating book proves that America was not built on the Bible and that Christian nationalism is, in fact, un-American. Seidel and Shermer also discuss: the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade and he explains how this could happen in the next 3–5 years new laws being passed in many southern states enacting the teaching of Christianity and the bible in public schools the thousands of letters that the FFRF receives every year from both secularists and members of minority religions who feel and believe that their rights are being threatened and even violated by Christian nationalists the “religious exemption” for vaccinations and why it’s nonsense why Christianity was not responsible for the abolition of slavery how the South justified slavery in the Civil War how Christian nationalists cherry pick biblical passages to fit current secular moral trends the historical treatment of women in Christianity the historical treatment of homosexuals in Christianity, and why moral progress must come from the bottom up from cultural change as well as top down from changing laws. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this dialogue, visionary astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin lays out the plans for how humans can become a space faring, multi-planetary civilization, starting with the competing entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who are creating a revolution in spaceflight that promises to transform the near future. Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars. Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this—to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn’t enough for all. Zubrin and Shermer also discuss: what the Apollo program meant to Zubrin and to the current generation of space engineers and explorers the balance between government and private enterprise for the future of space exploration comparing future space explorers with past earth explorers why type of government should be established on Mars what if a tyrant takes over the Martian colony and controls the air? what type of new species we will become if we establish permanent civilizations on other planets and moons? is human progress inevitable? the role of freedom in human progress. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on June 17, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this live podcast event hosted by the Santa Barbara Science Salon in conjunction with the Skeptics Society and the Unitarian Society, co-hosted by Dr. Whitney Detar, Dr. Shermer reflects on the question “What is Truth?” in the context of his lifelong search to understand why people believe weird things. What is a weird thing and how do we know what is true? This is what is known as the demarcation problem, and Dr. Shermer provides numerous examples of the difficulty of drawing a clear demarcating line between science and pseudoscience. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. Michael Shermer in Santa Barbara 2019 (photo by Robert Bernstein) Science, Dr. Shermer begins, is “A set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.” That is, it is “A method to explain the world that is testable and open to change.” Through the scientific method we aim for objectivity: the basing of conclusions on external validation. And we avoid mysticism: the basing of conclusions on personal insights that lack external validation. Dr. Shermer then presents examples of subjective/internal truths (dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate; Stairway to Heaven is the greatest rock song) and objective/external truths (evolution happened, the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago), and gave examples of how subjective truths (meditation makes me feel better) may become objective truths (meditation works). The lecture was followed by an extensive AMA/Q&A with the audience. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on May 19, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this wide-ranging conversation Science Salon host Dr. Michael Shermer speaks with cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment Dr. Brian Keating about the following topics: how he almost won the Nobel Prize for his research that confirmed the inflationary model of the Big Bang the problems with the Nobel Prize as it is currently structured, such as its limitation to only three people (when modern experiments are typically directed by a great many more); that it can’t be awarded posthumously (thereby neglecting people like Amos Tversky, who did as much work as his Nobel Prize-winning collaborator Daniel Kahneman); its neglect of many women scientists as deserving of the prize as their male counterparts, and especially how it distorts incentives to collaborate in science his upbringing and what inspired him to probe the deepest questions about the nature of the cosmos and reality what it’s like conducting research in the harsh conditions at the South Pole what banged in the Big Bang and what there was before the Big Bang the possibility (or not) of a multiverse model and a cyclical model of universes outside of, or before, our universe the relationship between science and religion and why they need not always be in conflict his Prager U video on why believing in the multiverse takes as much faith as believing in God. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on May 21, 2019. We apologize for the very poor audio-video quality of this recording. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought. When we try to think about how we think, we can’t help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you’ve done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words. In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn’t just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we’re feeling up or have grown far apart. In this dialogue Dr. Tversky and Dr. Shermer discuss: her new theory of cognition, in detail, with examples what is a thought? what did humans think about before language? what do babies, chimpanzees, and dogs think about without language? how will far future humans think if their language is completely different from ours? if you had to warn humans 10,000 years from now not to open a container of nuclear waste, what symbols would you use? gender differences in spatial reasoning why there are not more women programmers in particular and women in tech in general I.Q. tests, intelligence, and why thinking is so much more than what these tests capture. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon audio-only recording was created on June 1, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Dr. Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, at Florida State University. He has written or edited more than 50 books. His new book is “A Meaning to Life,” which we discuss on the show, as well as: Dr. Ruse’s early life growing up as a Quaker in England and how this influenced his thinking about religion why he is a bulldog against creationism but has a soft spot in his heart for religion why we should not read religious texts literally, but allegorically, and when we do there are great truths to be found, just as there is in great literature his beef with the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett how Darwinism is a religion Darwinian existentialism how a naturalist can still find morals, values, and meaning in life through the laws of nature, particularly human and social nature what’s wrong with academia today, and what advice he would give to someone asking how to lead a meaningful life. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on January 16, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In recent years atheism has become ever more visible, acceptable, and influential. Atheist apologists have become increasingly vociferous and confident in their claims: that a morality requiring benevolence towards all and universal human rights need not be grounded in religion; that modern science disproves the existence of God; and that there is nothing innately religious about human beings. In Atheist Overreach, Christian Smith takes a look at the evidence and arguments, and explains why we ought to be skeptical of these atheists' claims about morality, science, and human nature. He does not argue that atheism is necessarily wrong, but rather that its advocates are advancing crucial claims that are neither rationally defensible nor realistic. Their committed worldview feeds unhelpful arguments and contributes to the increasing polarization of today's political landscape. Everyone involved in the theism-atheism debates, in shared moral reflection, and in the public consumption of the findings of science should be committed to careful reasoning and rigorous criticism. In this podcast conversation about his book Smith and Shermer get into the weeds of… what constitutes moral values objectivity of right and wrong the secular moral philosophies of Philip Kitcher, Sam Harris, Peter Singer, and Steven Pinker Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Rawls: who is right? pluralism and morality theism and can it deliver the objective moral values it promises? moral progress. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on April 19, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on May 1, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
For this special edition of the Science Salon Podcast Dr. Shermer took a camera crew to Jared Diamond’s home in Los Angeles for an especially intimate portrait of the man and his theories. You won’t want to miss this conversation, one of the best we’ve yet recorded, with one of the most interesting minds of our time, perhaps of all time. In his earlier bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change — a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma. In a dazzling comparative study, Diamond shows us how seven countries have survived defining upheavals in the recent past — from US Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan to the Soviet invasion of Finland to Pinochet’s regime in Chile — through a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation, and he identifies patterns in the way that these distinct nations recovered from calamity. Looking ahead to the future, he investigates whether the United States, and the world, are squandering their natural advantages, on a path towards political conflict and decline. Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past? Adding a psychological dimension to the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics, and anthropology that marks all Diamond’s work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book that is epic, urgent, and groundbreaking. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on March 13, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this fascinating conversation with the evolutionary anthropologist Michael Tomasello, the Max Planck Institute scientist presents his new theory of how humans became such a distinctive species. Other theories focus on evolution. Here, Tomasello proposes a complementary theory of human uniqueness, focused on development. His data-driven model explains how those things that make us most human are constructed during the first years of a child’s life. Tomasello assembles nearly three decades of experimental work with chimpanzees, bonobos, and human children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that starkly differentiate humans from their closest primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities. But then, Tomasello argues, the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities—through the new forms of sociocultural interaction they enable—into uniquely human cognition and sociality. The first step occurs around nine months, with the emergence of joint intentionality, exercised mostly with caregiving adults. The second step occurs around three years, with the emergence of collective intentionality involving both authoritative adults, who convey cultural knowledge, and coequal peers, who elicit collaboration and communication. Finally, by age six or seven, children become responsible for self-regulating their beliefs and actions so that they comport with cultural norms. Becoming Human places human sociocultural activity within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, and shows how biology creates the conditions under which culture does its work. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 19, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Through the lens of evolutionary science, Dr. Garcia offers a novel perspective on why we hold our political ideas, and why they are so often in conflict. Drawing on examples from across the animal kingdom, Garcia reveals how even the most complex political processes can be influenced by our basic drives to survive and reproduce—including the policies we back, whether we are liberal or conservative, and whether we are inspired or repelled by the words of a president. Garcia explains how our political orientations derive from an ancestral history of violent male competition, surprisingly influencing how we respond to issues as wide-ranging as affirmative action, women’s rights, social welfare, abortion, foreign policy, and even global warming. Critically, Garcia shows us how our instinctive political tribalism can keep us from achieving stable, functioning societies, and offers solutions for rising above our ancestral past. Dr. Garcia and Dr. Shermer also discuss: Trump and other political leaders through the lens of evolutionary psychology what ancient fears Trump evokes when he says foreigners are bringing in disease and threaten our safety why people tend to prefer politicians who are taller, better looking, and with broader shoulders how liberals and conservatives differ in temperament and personality and how this difference plays out in public policy the moralistic fallacy and the naturalistic fallacy the authoritarian personality and social dominance theory why the Left-Right/Liberal-Conservative political spectrum is universal and what deep preferences it represents how women and men differ in cognitive styles of thinking, preferences, and career choices how PTSD as a real phenomena, especially among returning veterans, but why normal anxiety should not be considered pathological Hector A. Garcia, Psy.D., is the author of Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression. He is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in combat veterans. He has published extensively on evolutionary psychology, stress and politics in organizations, and the interplay between war and masculine identity. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 25, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this AMA special Dr. Shermer conducts a postmortem on his debate with the evangelical Christian theologian Luuk van de Weghe, with Windmill Ministries, before an audience of about 400 people, the vast majority of which were evangelicals. Dr. Shermer argues in the affirmative to the debate proposition that the miracles of Jesus are unbelievable. In this postmortem Dr. Shermer elaborates on his notes for the debate, suggesting ways to think about miracles from a scientific or naturalistic perspective. The debate took place on March 30, 2019 in Sequim, Washington, and was moderated by Justin Brierley. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this riveting conversation, Dr. Shermer speaks with Dr. Mark Moffett, biologist (Ph.D. Harvard, under E. O. Wilson), wildlife photographer for National Geographic, cave explorer, and world traveler about his new book, The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall, on the nature of societies from a biologist’s perspective. Scientists routinely explain that humans rule the planet because of our intelligence, tools, or language, but as Moffett argues, our biggest asset, surprisingly overlooked to date, is our ability to be comfortable around strangers. We can walk into a cafe or stadium full of unfamiliar people without thinking twice, but a chimpanzee, wolf or lion, encountering strangers could be attacked and perhaps killed. This ability—not IQ—has allowed humans to swarm over the world in vast nations. If we want to compare ourselves to the rest of the animal kingdom in order to define what makes our societies unique, Moffett argues that it’s time we look at ants. Making their way across the African savannah, the Australian coastline, and the American plains, our ancestors moved in small bands of lifelong fellow travelers. Month after month they made their camps and searched for food and water. Rarely did they encounter other human souls. So rarely that outsiders seemed to occupy a realm between reality and myth. Aborigines guessed the first Europeans they met were ghosts. Over time our view of the members of other societies has changed radically; today, foreigners don’t seem outlandish or otherworldly, as they once routinely did. As a consequence of global exploration starting in the 15th century, and more recently tourism and social media, contact between people from far-flung parts of the globe is now commonplace. Outright incomprehension of outsiders is no longer the excuse it often was in prehistory. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on April 8, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
We Homo sapiens can be the nicest of species and also the nastiest. What occurred during human evolution to account for this paradox? What are the two kinds of aggression that primates are prone to, and why did each evolve separately? How does the intensity of violence among humans compare with the aggressive behavior of other primates? How did humans domesticate themselves? And how were the acquisition of language and the practice of capital punishment determining factors in the rise of culture and civilization? Authoritative, provocative, and engaging, The Goodness Paradox offers a startlingly original theory of how, in the last 250 million years, humankind became an increasingly peaceful species in daily interactions even as its capacity for coolly planned and devastating violence remains undiminished. In tracing the evolutionary histories of reactive and proactive aggression, biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham forcefully and persuasively argues for the necessity of social tolerance and the control of savage divisiveness still haunting us today. Dr. Richard Wrangham is Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University. He is the author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human and Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. He has studied wild chimpanzees in Uganda since 1987 and received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of the British Academy. Dr. Wrangham and Dr. Shermer discuss: the paradox of Homo sapiens the two types of aggression: proactive and reactive the evolutionary origins of aggression and the logic behind it the neural pathways of aggression how species can be both artificially and self-domesticated the tyrant/bully problem and how our ancestors solved it war and human nature. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on March 5, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this exceptionally important conversation Dr. Shermer discusses at length the background to and research of Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and evolutionary sociologist famous for his study of social networks in humans and other animals. Drawing on advances in social science, evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience, and network science, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path—and how we are united by our common humanity. For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions—our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations—we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society. In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. With many vivid examples—including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own—Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness. Shermer and Christakis also discuss: his background and how he got into studying social networks and society why evolutionary psychology is an equal opportunity offender (Right: biological creationism; Left: cognitive creationism) the 8-character suite of human nature that goes into building a good society Unintentional Communities like shipwrecks Intentional Communities like communes Artificial Communities like Seasteading love and why it matters for a good society, and not just a good life friends and social networks genes and culture co-evolution boo words like positivism, reductionism, essentialism, determinism and why we need not fear them Hume’s Wall: is-ought naturalistic fallacy engineering new social worlds and governing mars. Nicholas A. Christakis is a physician and sociologist who explores the ancient origins and modern implications of human nature. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, where he is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, in the Departments of Sociology, Medicine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistics and Data Science, and Biomedical Engineering. He is the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science and the co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on March 27, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this pathbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom. He shows that freedom of choice isn’t nearly enough. To be free, we must also be able to navigate life. People often need something like a GPS device to help them get where they want to go — whether the issue involves health, money, jobs, children, or relationships. In both rich and poor countries, citizens often have no idea how to get to their desired destination. That is why they are unfree. People also face serious problems of self-control, as many of them make decisions today that can make their lives worse tomorrow. And in some cases, we would be just as happy with other choices, whether a different partner, career, or place to live — which raises the difficult question of which outcome best promotes our well-being. Accessible and lively, and drawing on perspectives from the humanities, religion, and the arts, as well as social science and the law, On Freedom explores a crucial dimension of the human condition that philosophers and economists have long missed — and shows what it would take to make freedom real. In addition to discussing his book Sunstein and Shermer talk about what it was like to work in the Obama administration, the issue of free will and determinism in the context of his theory of libertarian paternalism and choice architecture, opt-in vs. opt-out programs related to everything from menu options to organ donations, the electoral college, term limits for Supreme Court Justices, free speech on college campuses (and trigger warnings, safe spaces, and micro aggressions), Universal Basic Income, taxes, and terrorism. About Professor Sunstein’s principle, Dr. Shermer wrote in his book The Mind of the Market: Libertarian paternalism makes a deeper assumption about our nature — that at our core we are moral beings with a deep and intuitive sense about what is right and wrong, and that most of the time most people in most circumstances choose to do the right thing. Thus, applying the principle of libertarian paternalism to the larger politico-economic system as a whole, I suggest that the default option should be to grant people the libertarian ideal of maximum freedom, while using the best science available to inform the policy that gives structure to the minimum number of restrictions on our freedoms. Let’s opt for more freedom and add back restrictions on freedom only where absolutely necessary and with great reluctance. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on March 4, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this wide ranging conversation, the noted conservative political commentator and public intellectual Ben Shapiro makes the case that what makes the West great is its foundation in Judeo-Christian values. We can thank these values, Shapiro argues, “for the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty.” Shapiro says “Jerusalem and Athens built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty and gave billions spiritual purpose. Jerusalem and Athens were the foundations of the Magna Carta and the Treaty of Westphalia; they were the foundations of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.” As you might expect, Dr. Shermer disagrees on the source of these values, attributing them instead to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment and the secular thinkers who used reason and evidence to make the case for human rights and progress. For example: people are never to be treated as a means to an end but as an end in themselves (Kant) people have an inalienable right to life, liberty & happiness (Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence) people have an inherent right to privacy, speech, thought, and action (U.S. Constitution) governments may not infringe on such rights (John Stuart Mill) people should be treated equally under the law (John Locke) punishments should fit the crime and society should be based on the greatest good for the greatest number (Jeremy Bentham). These are all purely secular moral values derived from Enlightenment science and reason. Shermer also asks Shapiro how he derives “all men are created equal” from “we were created in God’s image”. Shapiro has a very reasonable answer, to which Shermer read from Thomas Jefferson’s own explanation for the origin of that phrase. In a letter to Henry Lee in 1825, Jefferson wrote: Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. Shapiro responded to Shermer’s counter-examples to his thesis, namely successful civilizations that arose before Judaism and Christianity, such as Sumeria, Babylonia, Akkadia, Assyria, Egypt, and Greece, and Christian civilizations that did not flourish, such as the Catholic countries of South America, or historically all the Christian nations in the Middle Ages that never produced anything like a democracy or capitalism. As two members of the Intellectual Dark Web, Shapiro and Shermer show how people can disagree even on fundamental principles and still have a civil conversation, and along the way find agreement and common cause. Other topics that came up: free will and determinism human nature and sexuality why rates of abortion are higher in the U.S. than other Western countries the increase in rates of suicide and depression in the U.S. unionizing the Intellectual Dark Web and striking for higher wages and redistribution of resources… Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 27, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Based on his latest book — Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves — the legendary biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal continues his empirical and theoretical work on animal societies, politics, intelligence, sentience, consciousness and, now, feelings and emotions. In this conversation Dr. de Waal and Dr. Shermer discuss: the difference between feelings and emotions the problem of “other minds” (how do we know what other people, much less animals, are thinking and feeling?) why it took a century since Darwin’s book on the evolution of animal and human emotions before scientists took up the mantle the push back from social scientists that Paul Ekman and other scientists, including de Waal, got for suggesting emotions evolved A.I. and emotions (can we program feelings into robots?) the six different emotions and why there are very probably more the nature/nurture debate in the study of emotions primate politics in U.S. elections: a biologist analyzes the Trump-Clinton debate #2 is Trump an alpha male or a bully? the difference between sentience and consciousness animal rights and the future of factory farming. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 12, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this wide ranging dialogue Dr. Shermer speaks with the famed economist Dr. Tyler Cowen, whose new book, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, is “a vision for a society of free, prosperous, and responsible individuals.” Dr. Cowen makes the case that… “Growth is good. Through history, economic growth, in particular, has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and more sources of fun. If we want to continue on our trends of growth, and the overwhelmingly positive outcomes for societies that come with it, every individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us and in the world at large and most of all our descendants in the future. So, how do we proceed?” Dr. Tyler Cowen is an economics professor at George Mason University where he holds the Holbert C. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog marginal Revolution, together with co-author Alex Tabarrok. He writes the “Economic Scene” column for the New York Times, and now contributes a regular opinion column at Bloomberg View. He has written for the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek and the Wilson Quarterly. Dr. Shermer and Dr. Cowen also discuss… what it means to be “on the margin,” “marginal utility,” and his blog “Marginal Revolution” trade wars and tariffs and what they really mean for consumers, companies, and countries (China, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), etc.) unemployment is now under 4%, the lowest in decades. Is Trump a savvy economist? why capitalism is a moral system as well as an economic system income inequality universal basic income regulating financial markets immigration: how does an economist think about borders and walls? why incentives matter libertarian paternalism and nudging people to do the right thing social media companies and governmental regulation Jordan Peterson and the power of narrative governing Mars: what political and economic systems should we take with us to the Red Planet, and which should we leave behind. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on January 15, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this Ask Me Anything, Dr. Shermer performs a postmortem on his debate/dialogue on with Dr. Brian Huffling at the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday February 23, 2019. The specific topic was: “Is the Reality of Evil Good Evidence Against the Christian God?” Watch the video of the debate. This is an exercise in the difference in thinking between a Christian philosopher/theologian/apologist and a secular scientist/humanist/atheist. Dr. Huffling focused on purely philosophical arguments about the nature of God, evil, omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection, whereas Dr. Shermer concentrated on specific examples of evil in the world and challenged Dr. Huffling to explain why God fails to do anything about them. In the end (literally at the end of the debate), when Dr. Shermer pushed him to explain why God allows childhood leukemia and the attendant suffering by children and their loving parents, Dr. Huffling’s answer was “I don’t know.” Watch previous episodes of AMA. Listen to Science Salon Podcasts and AMAs via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this dialogue Dr. Shermer speaks with Dr. David Sloan Wilson, the renowned evolutionary biologist and Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. His previous books include Evolution for Everyone, The Neighborhood Project, Does Altruism Exist? and Darwin’s Cathedral. He is the president of the Evolution Institute and editor in chief of its online magazine, This View of Life. His new book, out this week, is This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. He and Shermer discuss… what it means to complete the Darwinian Revolution solving the “is-ought” and “naturalistic fallacy” through proper science and philosophy why evolutionary psychology is an equal opportunity offender for liberals and conservatives why both laissez faire and command economies fail what is morality? dispelling the myth of social darwinism policy as a branch of biology solving the tragedy of the commons through game theory the evolutionary origins of good and evil natural selection, group selection, multi-level selection and the debate with Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins over selfish genes why nationalism is like religion how a biologist thinks about immigration, nuclear deterrence and other policy issues the rise of nationalism and what to do about it. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 1, 2019. We apologize for the quality of this episode; it was recorded before Michael moved to the new recording studio. We still have a couple episodes to release from the old studio. Quality of subsequent episodes will be better. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia. Michael welcomed Dr. Shermer back to the program, once more. This time the topics of discussion span out across the latest with Jussie Smollett & the media putting out a false narrative… shocking I know. The complete lack of self-awareness in America & how social media is now used as a weapon. Turning his back on god?
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia. Michael welcomed Dr. Shermer back to the program, once more. This time the topics of discussion span out across the latest with Jussie Smollett & the media putting out a false narrative… shocking I know. The complete lack of self-awareness in America & how social media is now used as a weapon. Turning his back on god? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
In this wide-ranging conversation Dr. Shermer talks with the author of the new book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World, Dr. Michele Gelfand, Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her pioneering research into cultural norms has been cited thousands of times in the press, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and Science, and on NPR. As a cultural psychologist, Dr. Gelfand takes us on an epic journey through human cultures, offering a startling new view of the world and ourselves. With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference—how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms. Why are clocks in Germany so accurate while those in Brazil are frequently wrong? Why do New Zealand’s women have the highest number of sexual partners? Why are “Red” and “Blue” States really so divided? Why is the driver of a Jaguar more likely to run a red light than the driver of a plumber’s van? Why does one spouse prize running a “tight ship” while the other refuses to “sweat the small stuff?” In search of a common answer, Gelfand has spent two decades conducting research in more than fifty countries. Across all age groups, family variations, social classes, businesses, states and nationalities, she’s identified a primal pattern that can trigger cooperation or conflict. Her fascinating conclusion: behavior is highly influenced by the perception of threat. Dr. Shermer and Dr. Gelfand discuss these and other interesting topics: examples of tightness and looseness in everything from parenting to international politics the motivation of suicide terrorists globalization and why it has been so disruptive Trump and why he won how Liberals and Conservatives think why gum is not allowed in Singapore but guns are allowed in America lessons from Jack Nickolson’s speech in A Few Good Men George Lakoff’s theory of moral politics and how that relates to tightness-looseness Jonathan Haidt’s theory of moral foundations and how that relates to tightness-looseness Alan Fiske’s Relational Models theory and how that relates to tightness-looseness. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 13, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this discussion with the author of the newly published book Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham tells what really happened at Chernobyl, by far the worst nuclear disaster in history, and why it took so long to discover what really happened. Human error and technological design flaws in the reactor are only proximate explanations for the core meltdown and explosion. The ultimate explanation is to be found in Soviet secrecy and lies. The book reads like an adventure novel, but it’s a richly researched non-fiction work by a brilliant storyteller. Don’t wait for the motion picture based on the book, which is years down the line. Get and read this gripping account to understand why people are still so afraid of nuclear power. Adam Higginbotham was born in England in 1968. His narrative non-fiction and feature writing has appeared in magazines including GQ, The New Yorker and the The New York Times magazine. He is the author of A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite, named one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2014 and optioned as a film by Warner Brothers. He recently completed Midnight In Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, which will be published in the US by Simon & Schuster on February 12th 2019. The former US correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph magazine and editor-in-chief of The Face, he lives with his family in New York City. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 5, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
Bruce Schneier is a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is a special advisor to IBM Security and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and the Tor Project. You can find him on Schneier.comand on twitter at @schneierblog He is the author of Data and Goliath, Applied Cryptography, Liars and Outliers, Secrets and Lies, and Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World. His new book is Click Here to Kill Everybody, which we discuss at length, as well as: How to protect yourself from being hacked and what to do if you are hacked Why companies do not invest more in software security The motivation of hackers: money, power, fun The probability of your car being hacked and driven into a wall The probability of planes being hacked and felled from the sky Edward Snowden and Wikileaks: hero or villain The Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg What would happen if the electrical grid was hacked Cyberdeaths (homicides done remotely over the Internet) and how the government will respond with regulations when it does If the government were to set a policy for the security level of an IoT device that can kill people, is there a maximum allowed probability that it could be hacked? The North Korean hack of Sony The Russian hack of the 2016 election and how to prevent that from happening again Why we’re still using paper ballots in our voting system rather than computers and ATMs like banks use. The lessons of Y2K for the coming AI apocalypse What keeps him up at night Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on January 21, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this wide-ranging dialogue Michael Shermer and Gregg Hurwitz discuss being a public intellectual, how to convey ideas through fiction vs. nonfiction, the role of myths and archetypes in narrative stories, Jordan Peterson and religion, Shakespeare and tragedy, the role of life experience and suffering in the development of a successful novelist, screenwriter, or filmmaker, the role of narrative in politics, especially the 2016 election in which Trump’s narrative was surprisingly compelling to tens of millions of people, even over other highly qualified conservative candidates in the primary election campaign, and what democrats needs to do to recapture the White House in 2020. Gregg Hurwitz is the New York Times #1 international bestselling author of 20 thrillers, including his latest novel Out of the Dark. His novels have won numerous literary awards, graced top ten lists, and have been published in 30 languages. He has also written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to many of the major studios, and written, developed, and produced television scripts for various networks. He is also a New York Times bestselling comic book writer, having penned stories for Marvel (Wolverine, Punisher) and DC (Batman, Penguin). He has published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare, taught fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA and Harvard. He earned a BA from Harvard where Jordan Peterson was his thesis advisor, and a Master’s from Trinity College Oxford where he studied Shakespearean tragedy. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on January 23, 2019. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon In this short AMA Michael Shermer answers a single question: “What is your opinion of Jordan Peterson?” Dr. Shermer is asked this question in nearly every public appearance he makes, along with regular emails and social media queries he receives. At a November 2018 public event with Richard Dawkins, in the Q&A, he and Shermer received no less than four questions about Jordan Peterson, even though Jordan was not the topic of the dialogue between Dawkins and Shermer. Watch that edited clip reel from that dialogue. Clearly there is much interest in Jordan Peterson and the phenomenon surrounding him, so Dr. Shermer thought he would issue his opinion in the form of an essay he penned for Skeptic magazine 23.3: “Have Archetype — Will Travel: The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon”. Purchase back issue 23.3 online. See also Steven Beckner’s brilliant analysis of Jordan Peterson in the same issue: “Thought Crimes Jordan Peterson and the Meaning of the Meaning of Life”. (Some have said this is the best and fairest article ever written about Peterson.) In Science Salon AMA # 3, Dr. Shermer offers a brief summary of his current opinion of Peterson and then reads his essay: “Have Archetype — Will Travel: The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon”. Watch previous episodes of AMA. Listen to Science Salon Podcasts and AMAs via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.
In this episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer speaks with Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focuses on issues of rule of law, security, and governance in post-conflict countries, fragile states, and states in transition. As the founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project, she spent nearly a decade leading a movement of national security, political, and military leaders working to promote people and policies that strengthen security, stability, rights, and human dignity in America and around the world. In 2011, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton appointed Kleinfeld to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, which advises the secretary of state quarterly, a role she served through 2014. Dr. Kleinfeld has consulted on rule of law reform for the World Bank, the European Union, the OECD, the Open Society Institute, and other institutions, and has briefed multiple government agencies in the United States and abroad. She is the author of Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform (Carnegie, 2012), which was chosen by Foreign Affairs magazine as one of the best foreign policy books of 2012. Named one of the top 40 Under 40 Political Leaders in America by Time magazine in 2010, Kleinfeld has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other national television, radio, and print media. Her new book is A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security. In this conversation we discuss her new book, specifically: What it says about human nature that people so easily turn to violence when there is not central authority. What she learned about law and order growing up in libertarian Alaska, and how she got interested in studying violence in failed states around the world. Why studying history and reading the classics (like Thucydides) was the best preparation she had for her job. Lessons from The Godfather on what happens when governments become corrupt—strong men promising security and protection from corruption rise up. Pace the Godfather, what happened in the Republic of Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union, and why violence spiked and then declined. Why dictators like Saddam Hussein do not actually keep violence down in their countries because state-sponsored violence goes unrecorded. Her experiences living and working in Russia and other countries undergoing turmoil. Putin and Russian today and what they want. Columbia as a model of a failed state and what the U.S. did there to help turn things around. How the Wild West of the United States was tamed. Why violence is higher in the Southern United States, and why lynching and other hate crimes were driven more by political power and expediency than by racial hatred (data shows that such crimes peaked before elections). How the 21st century is so different from the 20th century’s battle of “isms”: communism, socialism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, liberalism, individualism, idealism, humanism, etc. We’re living in a different world today. We’re about to colonize Mars and establish a new society there. What parts of government should we take with us there, and what parts should we leave behind? That is, what have we learned over the millennia in terms of good vs. bad governance. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This remote Science Salon was recorded on January 4, 2019.
In this episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer talks to the renowned evolutionary behavioral scientist and Concordia University professor Dr. Gad Saad. Starting with his escape to Canada from war-torn Lebanon, Dr. Saad recounts how he got interested in the study of human nature in general and consumer behavior in particular through the evolutionary lens, why people make the choices they do in the marketplace, why evolutionary psychology is an equal-opportunity offender to both the political left and right, what’s wrong with the Blank Slate model of human nature, what it means to hypothesize that something evolved “for” an adaptive reason, how evolutionary psychologists test their claims, the consilience of human knowledge, epistemological humility, postmodernism and how it has corrupted the academy, and the vital importance of free speech and free inquiry in science and society. Dr. Gad Saad held the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption from 2008 to 2018. He is the author of The Consuming Instinct (2011, Prometheus Books) and The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (2007, Lawrence Erlbaum), editor of Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences (2011, Springer), and is finishing his next book on idea pathogens and how they have spread like a contagion in the academy, now spilling out into government and corporations. He is the host of the popular podcast The Saad Truth, which focuses on science, religion, political correctness, multiculturalism, postmodernism, third-wave feminism, Islam, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and many other topics. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on December 26, 2018.
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