339. Gerald and Patricia Posner on Evil
Shermer and the Posners discuss: the nature and banality of evil • Are we all potential Nazis? • Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler, Hitler • The Pharmacist of Auschwitz • the Holocaust • the Stanford Prison ...
11 Apr 20231h 52min
338. AI SciFi — Physicist, Science Fiction Author, and AI Expert David Brin on ChatGPT and Whether AI Poses an Existential Threat
Shermer and Brin discuss: AI and AGI • are they existential threats? • the alignment problem • Large Language Models • ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5, and beyond • the Future of Life Institute's Open Letter ca...
8 Apr 20231h 36min
337. On the Origin of Time — Thomas Hertog on Stephen Hawking's Final Theory
Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. In order to solve this myster...
1 Apr 20231h 25min
336. The Sacred Depths of Nature — Ursula Goodenough on How to Find Sacred Scientific Spirituality
For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in Th...
28 Mar 20231h 38min
335. Jennifer Michael Hecht on How to Find Meaning, Purpose, and Happiness in Everyday Life
We have calendars to mark time, communal spaces to bring us together, bells to signal hours of contemplation, official archives to record legacies, the wisdom of sages read aloud, weekly, to map out the...
25 Mar 20231h 35min
334. The End of the World: Bart Ehrman on What the Bible Really Says About the End
You'll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradict...
21 Mar 20231h 42min
333. Kevin Kelly — ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Excellent Advice for Living
On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, Kelly had more to say tha...
18 Mar 20231h 45min
332. Wrongfully Convicted, Ultimately Acquitted — Amanda Knox on Criminal Injustice and Why It Happens
Amanda Knox spent four years in an Italian prison for a crime she did not commit. In the fall of 2007, the 20-year-old college coed left Seattle to study abroad in Italy, but her life was shattered wh...
14 Mar 202357min
