HeyJaredThe Michael Shermer Show
The Michael Shermer Show is a series of long-form conversations between Dr. Michael Shermer and leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 11, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 6, 2026
Latest episodes
Why America Failed to Stop 9/11 | Gerald Posner & Michael Shermer (opens the original)
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How did 19 hijackers evade the world's most advanced intelligence apparatus despite years of warnings? Twenty-five years after 9/11, journalist Gerald Posner joins Michael Shermer to explain the security failures that left America vulnerable. Those failures, compounded by government secrecy, have helped sustain suspicions that officials orchestrated the attacks or deliberately allowed them to happen. What does the evidence show, and have we learned the right lessons?
Why Be Honest When Cheating Pays? (opens the original)
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Most of us think of ourselves as honest. But would we still tell the truth if lying got us what we wanted—and nobody would ever find out? Philosopher Christian Miller joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book The Honesty Crisis and the uncomfortable gap between having a reputation for honesty and actually being honest. Christian B. Miller is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. He is the author of over 130 articles as well as several books. Thanks to a $4.4 millio
Is the Future Unknowable? Uncertainty, Free Will, and the Limits of Science (opens the original)
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What if uncertainty isn't a temporary problem science will eventually solve, but a fundamental feature of reality? Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein joins Michael Shermer to make the case that the universe may be far less deterministic—and the future far less predictable—than we like to imagine. Firestein and Shermer discuss chaos and complexity, Darwin and randomness, free will, scientific progress, the replication crisis, COVID and the problem of communicating uncertainty, why humans are so bad
Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven't Found Them (opens the original)
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UFOs were once the stuff of tabloids and conspiracy theories. Today they're the subject of congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations, mainstream news coverage, and a new wave of claims about government cover-ups and alien technology. Adam Kirsch, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of We Want to Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream and Why It Matters , joins Michael Shermer to ask what changed—and why the idea of extraterrestrial visitors has such a powerful hold on us. They discuss Ro
Is There a Second Arrow of Time? A New Law of Evolution, Information, and Complexity (opens the original)
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Why does the universe produce ever more elaborate forms, from atoms and minerals to cells, organisms, brains, technology, and civilization? The familiar laws of physics can explain much of what happens in nature, but Robert Hazen and Michael Wong argue that something important has been missing: a law describing how evolving systems generate and select new forms over time. Michael Shermer speaks with Hazen and Wong about their proposed law of increasing functional information, the central idea be
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