The Michael Shermer Show

In episode 153, Michael speaks with University of Oxford research psychologist Dr. Kevin Dutton about his new book Black-and-White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World. Shermer and Dutton discuss a wide gamut including black-and-white thinking in physics, biology, psychology, politics, economics, society; categories, stereotypes, bigotries; the dark side of black-and-white thinking: tribalism, xenophobia, and racism; abortion, gender, cults, sects, religions, mental disorders, and consciousness. Don't miss this fascinating dialogue with the author of Flipnosis and The Wisdom of Psychopaths (which won the prize for Best American Science and Nature Writing).

19 Tammi 20211h 46min

Dr. Michael Shermer received a lot of interesting and constructive responses to episode 151, his commentary on the events of January 6, 2021 — the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. In episode 152, Shermer responds to critics, reminding us that the truth or falsity of a claim of any kind that can be adjudicated by science and reason applies not just to astrologers, psychics, UFO proponents, and Big Foot hunters (all of which we cover in Skeptic magazine), but to conspiracy theories, including and especially those in the realm of politics, economics, and ideology, which as we’ve seen matters very much to the stability of our democracy and trust in the institutions that keep society stable. Whether a particular conspiracy theory is true or false very much matters.

17 Tammi 202121min

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire In this monologue commentary on the events of January 6, 2021, Dr. Shermer applies causal inference theory to Trump’s speech that morning, the violent assault on the Capitol that followed, the banning of Trump off social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the fears on the Right of social media censoriousness on the Left, the breaking up of big tech social media companies, and related topics, including what it means to “believe” a conspiracy theory.

12 Tammi 202146min

“Nothing about the biology of exercise makes sense except in the light of evolution, and nothing about exercise as a behavior makes sense except in the light of anthropology.” In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise — to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise. Shermer and Lieberman also discuss: evolutionary and anthropological perspectives on physical activity, why we never evolved to exercise, physical activity vs. exercise, sleep: how much do we really need? walking vs. running; speed vs. strength, endurance and aging: why exercise matters, why we age and die, exercise and diet, Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training? Is sitting really the new smoking? Is BMI really a useful measure? exercise and disease: obesity, diabetes/metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease (and cholesterol), osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, depression, and cancer, immune systems and exercise, and How much exercise should you get each week? Daniel E. Lieberman is Edwin M. Lerner Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. He is the author of the national best seller The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

5 Tammi 20211h 30min

In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast, the last of 2020, Dr. Michael Shermer offers some reflections on 2020, starting with race and the Black Lives Movement, putting it into perspective from other books he read this year, along with podcast guests who appeared in 2020, such as Shelby Steele. Dr. Shermer recently read Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste and Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Anti-Racist, and offers some thoughts on them, along with other issues competing for our attention of ills troubling society, including class conflicts, income inequality, lack of education, anti-Semitism, far-left illiberalism, and religious indoctrination. Everyone thinks that their particular focus is the only one that matters, but broad reading can put each into perspective. Dr. Shermer then reads his essay of the podcast title, originally published in The American Scholar and expanded on here and in an upcoming issue of Skeptic magazine.

29 Joulu 202043min

In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast Dr. Michael Shermer reflects on the recent resurrection of Jordan Peterson, the resurgent criticism of him and why so many people attack him, why similar such unwarranted attacks have been made against public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris today, and of Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan in the past. Dr. Shermer then reads his essay of this title that was originally published in Skepticmagazine 23.3 (2018), and on skeptic.com, and is reprinted in his essay collection Giving the Devil His Due.

22 Joulu 202041min

In a conversation based on the book Threats: Intimidation and its Discontents, Shermer and Barash discuss: 2020 as the most momentous year of the past half century, judging historical figures based on modern morals (e.g., race and slavery), whether humans are naturally gullible or skeptical, the evolutionary logic of deterrence, how animals deal with threats, how humans deal with threats, game theory of deterring threats, nuclear deterrence (Mutual Assured Destruction) as a threat strategy, the motives behind nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. arms race against the U.S.S.R., the arms race within the U.S. between the Army, Navy, and Airforce, close calls with nuclear weapons and why this is not a sustainable strategy, how to deal with threats like Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea, Trump and what he did right with regard to North Korea. David P. Barash is an evolutionary biologist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington. He has written more than 280 peer-reviewed articles and 40 books. Barash has penned op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Chicago Tribune, as well as numerous pieces in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nautilus, and Skeptic.

15 Joulu 20201h 49min

Shermer and Prothero discuss: flat earth theories and how we know the earth is round, hollow earth theories and how we know it’s not hollow, the return of Ptolemy and an earth-centered solar system model (and how we know it’s wrong), how science deals with anomalies, fringe claims, and challenges to the orthodoxy, whether humans were in the San Diego area 130,000 years ago, how consensus is achieved in science (and the messy road to get there), from Newton to Einstein and what ultimately determines if a theory is true or not, flood myths and what causes such stories to arise in some cultures but not others, catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism in geology, the age of the earth and how geologists determined it, the myth of Atlantis and what Plato really intended with his account, biblical accounts of the world and how we should read the book as literature, not science, how science won the evolution-creation wars, science denial and how to deal with it, and the real-world consequences of denying science. Dr. Donald R. Prothero has taught geology for over 33 years as Professor of Geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and currently at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, CA. He earned M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in geological sciences from Columbia University in 1982. He is currently the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of 33 books and over 250 scientific papers, including five leading geology textbooks and three trade books as well as edited symposium volumes and other technical works. He is on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine, and in the past has served as an associate or technical editor for Geology, Paleobiologyand Journal of Paleontology. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Paleontological Society, and the Linnaean Society of London, and has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation. In 1991, he received the Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society for the outstanding paleontologist under the age of 40. He has also been featured on several television documentaries, including episodes of Paleoworld (BBC), Prehistoric Monsters Revealed (History Channel), Entelodon and Hyaenodon (National Geographic Channel) and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts (BBC).

8 Joulu 20201h 18min