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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss486_Jon_Mills_2024_11_19.mp3Download MP3Michael Shermer interviews Jon Mills, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, on a variety of topics, including the evolution of psychoanalysis, the dynamics of therapeutic relationships, and the psychological roots of aggression and trauma. Mills explains Freud’s lasting influence, the moral implications of aggression, and the role violence plays in society. The conversation also explores how trauma affects individuals and families across generations and the difficulty of understanding human behavior when faced with global challenges.

The discussion extends to broader issues such as individuality, the struggles faced by modern youth, and the evolution of belief in God. Shermer and Mills discuss how technology impacts mental health and the pursuit of spirituality without relying on traditional religion.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. His two latest books are Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality, and End of the World: Civilization and its Fate.

End of the World: Civilization and Its FateFamine. Extreme climate change. Threats of global war and nuclear annihilation. Obscene wealth disparities. Is civilization destined for self-annihilation? In this timely book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills explores the emergencies that could ignite an apocalypse. As we idly stand by in the face of ecological, economic, and societal collapse, we must seriously question whether humanity is under the sway of a collective unconscious death wish. Examining ominous existential risks and drawing on the psychological motivations, unconscious conflicts, and cultural complexes that drive human behavior and social relations, he offers fresh new perspectives on the looming fate of humanity based on a collective bystander disorder.

End of the World is a warning about the dangerous precipice we find ourselves careening toward and a call to action to take control of our own fate.

Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular SpiritualityIn this controversial book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills argues that God does not exist; and more provocatively, that God cannot exist as anything but an idea. Put concisely, God is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. Mills argues that the idea or conception of God is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation; a self-relation to an internalized idealized object, the idealization of imagined value.

After demonstrating the lack of any empirical evidence and the logical impossibility of God, Mills explains the psychological motivations underlying humanity’s need to invent a supreme being. In a highly nuanced analysis of unconscious processes informing the psychology of belief and institutionalized social ideology, he concludes that belief in God is the failure to accept our impending death and mourn natural absence for the delusion of divine presence. As an alternative to theistic faith, he offers a secular spirituality that emphasizes the quality of lived experience, the primacy of feeling and value inquiry, ethical self-consciousness, aesthetic and ecological sensibility, and authentic relationality toward self, other, and world as the pursuit of a beautiful soul in search of the numinous.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Honorary Professor, Department of Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK, on faculty in the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, USA, and on faculty and a Supervising Analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, USA. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship including 5 Gradiva Awards, he is the author and/or editor of over 30 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies including most recently Psyche, Culture, World. In 2015 he was given the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Psychological Association. He is based in Ontario, Canada. His two latest books that I want to discuss today are Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality, and End of the World: Civilization and its Fate.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss485_Michael_Shermer_2024_11_14.mp3Download MP3In this special solo episode, Michael Shermer reflects on the 2024 election.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss484_Ben_Westhoff_2024_11_12.mp3Download MP3In 2023, 107,543 Americans died from an overdose—over 75 thousand of those overdosed from fentanyl. This is almost double the number of people who died in car accidents or from gun homicides that year.

Fentanyl has been cut into heroin for years, but now is often mixed into meth and cocaine, fueling rising death counts for those drugs, a troubling development, considering that Americans are much more likely to try meth and cocaine than heroin.

In Canada, the numbers are similarly astronomical, and fentanyl deaths have marched upward in Australia and many European countries as well. Ten years ago, fentanyl and its analogues overtook heroin to become the deadliest drug in Sweden.

“Fentanyl is the game changer,” Special Agent in Charge James Hunt of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told Vice News. “It’s the most dangerous substance in the history of drug tracking. Heroin and cocaine pale in comparison to how dangerous fentanyl is.”

Ben Westhoff is a best-selling investigative journalist focused on drugs, culture, and poverty. His book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic is the bombshell first book about fentanyl. Since its publication, Westhoff has advised top government officials on the fentanyl crisis, including from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the U.S. embassy in Beijing, and the U.S. State Department.

His new book Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth tells the story of his relationship with Jorell Cleveland, his longtime mentee in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. When Jorell was murdered at age 19, and the case went cold, Ben used his skills as an investigative journalist to find the killer. It’s a three-year investigation set in the northern suburbs of St. Louis that uncovers a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. Follow him at benwesthoff.substack.com and benwesthoff.com.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss483_Warren_Hern_2024_11_09.mp3Download MP3In his new book Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade, a nationally prominent doctor reports the daily challenges of offering and receiving abortion services in a volatile political and social atmosphere. In stories from the front lines–from protecting patients and staff from protesters’ attacks to the dangers to women of restricted access to abortion services, and the pertinent findings of his remote research in Latin America, Hern’s book is strikingly detailed just as it exposes the needs of women and the U.S. national interest. Dr. Hern–an abortion specialist, researcher, scholar, and highly visible public advocate – shows how abortion saves women’s lives given the many risks that arise during pregnancy, more than most people realize. He points to political and national solutions to reverse a reawakened crisis that now threatens democracy. Throughout the book, Dr. Hern shows how the current emergency was largely created by political actors who have exploited and distorted the abortion issue to increase and consolidate their power.

A vital component of women’s health care, the crisis over abortion is not new. Yet the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the steady accumulation of power by America’s right wing has put the issue at a level of urgency and national prominence not seen since the days before legalization. Women’s need for safe abortion services will continue as the struggle to secure their rights intensifies.

Warren M. Hern, M.D., is known to the public through his many appearances on CNN, Rachel Maddow/MSNBC, Sixty Minutes, and in the pages of The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post, and dozens more media. A scientist, Hern wrote about the need for safe abortion services before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and was present at the first Supreme Court arguments. In his research and medical work, he pioneered since 1973 the modern safe practice of early and late abortion in his highly influential books and scholarship. A tireless national activist for women’s reproductive rights, he is an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and holds a clinical appointment in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado medical center. He holds doctorates in medicine and epidemiology. His book is Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade.

Shermer and Hern discuss:

• How and why he became an abortion doctor
• Age of Unreason: Crusades, Inquisition, Witch hunts, pogroms against Jews, slavery, genocide and ethnocide, McCarthyism
• Abortions pre-Roe going back centuries
• Abortions after Roe
• Late term abortion, Partial birth abortion, Abortion on demand
• What exactly is involved in an abortion: walk us through the procedure
• Protests, death threats and violence against abortion doctors and clinics
• Fetal personhood and when life begins
• Weighted risks of abortion vs. pregnancy.

Show Notes* According to the CDC, the number of abortions in the United States in 2021 was 625,978 * Women in their 20s accounted for more than half of abortions, higher for minority women, over half performed medication (mifepristone & misoprostol) at ≤9 weeks’ gestation (53.0%) * Guttmacher Institute: 930,160 abortions in 2020. Decline: * 744k in 1973, 1.25m in 1975, 1.6m in 1990, 1.25m in 2005, 930,160 in 2020 * 14.4/1,000 women (compare homicide rate of 5.9/100,000 people) * Abortion providers: 2,908 in 1982, 1603 in 2020 * 87% unmarried women (CDC) * Black: 42%, 30% White, 22% Hispanic, 6% other races * Second abortions: 24%; Third abortions: 11%; 4th abortion: 8% * 93% of abortions in the 1st trimester, at or before 13 weeks of gestation * 6% between 14-20 weeks of pregnancy; 1% at 21 weeks or more.

Why women get abortions—2013 study “Understanding Why Women Seek Abortions in the US” (BMC Women’s Health Antonia Biggs, Heather Gould, Diana Greene Foster):

• Financial (40%)
• Timing (36%)
• Partner-related reasons (31%)
• Need to focus on other children (29%)

The top three reason categories cited in both studies were: 1) “Having a baby would dramatically change my life” (i.e., interfere with education, employment and ability to take care of existing children and other dependents) (74% in 2004 and 78% in 1987), 2) “I can’t afford a baby now” (e.g., unmarried, student, can’t afford childcare or basic needs) (73% in 2004 and 69% in 1987), and 3) “I don’t want to be a single mother or am having relationship problems” (48% in 2004 and 52% in 1987). A sizeable proportion of women in 2004 and 1987 also reported having completed their childbearing (38% and 28%), not being ready for a/another child (32% and 36%), and not wanting people to know they had sex or became pregnant (25% and 33%)

What about medical problems with the woman or the fetus? Lozier Institute 2024 study:

• Rape and incest: 0.4%
• Risk to the woman’s life or a major bodily function: 0.3%
• Other physical health concerns: 2.2%
• Abnormality in the unborn baby: 1.2%
• Elective and unspecified reasons: 95.9%

Worldwide (Guttmacher Institute):

• 121 million unintended pregnancies occurred each year between 2015 and 2019
• Of these unintended pregnancies, 61% ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year

Americans’ Self-ID on Abortion, 2024 (Gallup):

• Pro-choice: 54%, Pro-life: 41%
• Men: 45% pro-choice/49% pro-life; Women: 63% pro-choice/33% pro-life
• Republican: 23% pro-choice/69% pro-life; Democrat: 86% pro-choice/12% pro-life; Independent: 52% pro-choice/41% pro-life

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss482_Michael_Shermer_2024_10_31.mp3Download MP3In this solo episode, Michael Shermer discusses the upcoming election, reflecting on the historical context of past elections and the political polarization that has intensified over the years.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss481_Edward_Goldberg_2024_10_29.mp3Download MP3The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon: How the U.S. Came to Lead the World examines America’s role as the global liberal hegemon. Using a historical analysis to understand how the United States came to serve as the world leader, Goldberg argues why the role of a liberal hegemon is needed, whether the United States has the ability to fulfill this role, and what the pitfalls and liabilities of continuing in this role are for the nation. He also considers the impact that this role on the global stage has for the country as well as individual citizens of the United States. Goldberg argues that the United States’s geographic location away from strong competitors, it’s role as the dominant economy for much of the 20th century, and its political culture of meritocracy all contributed to the United States taking this role in the 1940s. He also argues that the role of liberal hegemon has shifted to include not only being the international policeperson but also to be the world’s central banker, a role that at this time only the United States can fill.

Edward Goldberg is a leading expert in the area of where global politics and economics intercept. He teaches International Political Economy at the New York University Center for Global Affairs where he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor. He is also a Scholarly Practitioner at the Zicklin Graduate School of Business of Baruch College of the City University of New York where he teaches courses on globalization. With over 30 years of experience in international business and as a former member of President Barack Obama’s election Foreign Policy Network Team, Dr. Goldberg is the author of Why Globalization Works For America: How Nationalist Trade Policies Destroy Countries, and The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs A New Foreign Policy. He is a much-quoted essayist and public speaker on the subjects of Globalization, European-American relations, U.S.-Russian and China relations. He has commented on these issues on PBS, NPR, CBS, Bloomberg, and in The New York Times, The Hill, and the Huffington Post. His new book is The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon: How the U.S. Came to Lead the World.

Shermer and Goldberg discuss:

“In the 1940s, when America anointed itself hegemon, somewhat like in Great Britain in the nineteenth century, American foreign policy was largely, aside from Harry Truman and a few others, dominated by a group of men who generally all went to similar prep schools and graduated from Princeton, Yale, or Harvard. This has changed drastically. If there is one common domestic thread in American post-World War II history, it is how American society and political life has become noticeably more diverse.”

• The 2024 presidential election is the first time Americans are voting on whether the U.S. should remain the so-called “leader of the free world” – or just go it alone as Donald Trump suggests. Even in the late 1930s, the heyday of isolationism, isolationism never appeared on the ballot. In fact in the presidential election of 1940, the Republican candidate Wendel Wilkie was an internationalist.
• What are the benefits to American citizens to continue in this role? What are the costs? And why can’t another nation or some institution play this role?
• Does the U.S. need allies to be successful or are relationships/institutions like NATO “obsolete” as Trump has stated?
• Why does there need to be a global leader or as Secretary of State Blinken said, an organizer? Is there any logic for instance to Donald Trump’s statement that he would “encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want?”
• As the world faces new globalized communal problems, climate change, pandemics, financial contagion, etc., is the U.S. political culture capable of leading the world against these more abstract threats?
• Secretary of State Blinken’s statement, “Whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself,” I look at why the United States is the only country capable of organizing the world, of being the liberal hegemon.
• the world’s central banker, the financial fireman of the world, a position at this time only the United States can fulfill.
• why a liberal hegemon is needed. Why can’t the United Nations organize the world or be the cop?
• The United States was the only major nation whose birth was influenced by the philosophical enlightenment movement. Thus, it has a very different view of the role of government. In America, the government was created not to watch over the individual welfare of its citizens but to guarantee their fundamental rights and liberties. That perspective emphasizes the individual over the community. Does America’s political culture, based on an aggrandized view of the eighteenth-century enlightenment theory of individual rights, hinder its ability to lead in the twenty-first century?
• Foreign governments have been trying to influence American foreign policy since the time of George Washington.
• disastrous mistakes like Vietnam and Iraq
• The March of Folly
• are the rewards of hegemony worth the price for the American citizen? $1.120 trillion the United States spent on defense in 2022. This expenditure created approximately 800,000 civilian jobs and 1.3 million active-duty jobs. But could these funds have created larger economic growth if applied to other areas?
• U.S. has defense treaties with 51 countries plus independent security understandings with others.
• Is the Iowa farmer aware that the reason their soybeans can be shipped safely around the world is because of the protection of the United States Navy?
• Roosevelt State of the Union address to Congress January 6, 1941: “No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion-or even good business … Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
• The United States has agreed to treaties obligating it to the defense of 51 countries:
  • 28 countries in NATO, which is essentially a defense umbrella for Canada and most of Europe
  • 18 through the Rio Treaty that applies to most of Central and South America
  • ANZUS Treaty with Australia and New Zealand
  • A bilateral treaty with Japan
  • A bilateral treaty with South Korea
  • A bilateral treaty with the Philippines.
• The theory behind most of these treaties derived from the lessons of World War I and II and especially the isolationist period between those two wars. Essentially, the underlying idea for these agreements is to halt aggression early rather than letting it metastasize and potentially overcome the United States.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss480_Talia_Lavin_2024_10_26.mp3Download MP3All across America, a storm is gathering: from book bans in school libraries to anti-trans laws in state legislatures; fire-bombings of abortion clinics and protests against gay rights. The Christian Right, a cunning political force in America for more than half a century, has never been more powerful than it is right now—it propelled Donald Trump to power, and it won’t stop until it’s refashioned America in its own image.

In Wild Faith, critically acclaimed author Talia Lavin goes deep into what motivates the Christian Right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic ideology. Using primary sources and firsthand accounts, Lavin introduces you to “deliverance ministers” who carry out exorcisms by the hundreds; modern-day, self-proclaimed prophets and apostles; Christian militias, cults, zealots, and showmen; and the people in power who are aiding them to achieve their goals. Along the way, she explores anti-abortion terrorists, the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit.

From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.

Talia Lavin is the author of the critically acclaimed book Culture Warlords. She is a journalist who has had bylines in the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Times Review of Books, the Washington Post, and more. She writes a newsletter, The Sword and the Sandwich, which is featured in Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in comparative literature, and was a Fulbright scholar who spent a year in Ukraine. Her first book was Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy. Her new book is Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America.

Shermer and Lavin discuss:

• The Satanic Panic and the McMartin preschool case
• The Recovered Memory Movement
• Multiple Personality Disorder
• Demon possession and exorcisms
• Moral panics
• The Evangelical right is working hard to dominate what it refers to as the Seven Mountains of Societal Influence: Arts and entertainment, business, education, family, government, media, and religion
• How Christian dominance has waxed and waned over the past 50 years
• Opposing abortion by all possible means
• Opposing marriage equality
• Opposing no-fault divorce in favor of hard-to-sever “covenant marriages”
• Opposing out-of-wedlock heterosexual sex
• Christian Zionism: “Christian Zionists have spent more than $65 million in support of ongoing Israeli settlements within the disputed territories of the West Bank,” “Before the Messiah can return, the nation of Israel must be restored; Jerusalem must be a Jewish city; and the Temple, the center of worship and sacrifice in the ancient Jewish world, which was last destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, must be rebuilt,” writes Lavin. But here’s the rub: For the temple to be rebuilt, the Jewish people have to be “purified with the ashes of a red heifer.” (young, female cow)
• In a poll conducted in 2018 by Christian research organization LifeWay Research, a staggering 80 percent of evangelicals agreed with the statement that the creation of the modern state of Israel was a “fulfillment of Bible prophecy that shows we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ.” Some may see this as imminent, others as eventual, though a 2010 Pew poll showed nearly 60 percent of white evangelical Christians in the U.S. expect Jesus Christ to return by 2050.
• Premillenarian dispensationalism, which was developed in the late nineteenth century and holds that the world is divided into eras, or dispensations, which will culminate in Christ’s triumphant return.
• Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth
• Why do Christians want to control female sexuality and reproductive freedom?
• Prostitution and pornography
• Children and families.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss479_Mark_Weinstein_2024_10_22.mp3Download MP3Big Tech is driving us, our kids, and society mad. In the nick of time, Restoring Our Sanity Online presents the bold, revolutionary framework for an epic reboot. What would social media look like if it nourished our critical thinking, mental health, privacy, civil discourse, and democracy? Is that even possible?

Restoring Our Sanity Online is the entertaining, informative, and frequently jaw-dropping social reset by Mark Weinstein, contemporary tech leader, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking.

This book is for all of us. Casual and heavy users of social media, parents, teachers, students, techies, entrepreneurs, investors, and elected officials. Restoring Our Sanity Online is the catapult to an exciting, enriching, and authentic future. Readers will embark on a captivating journey leading to an inspiring and actionable reinvention.

Restoring Our Sanity Online includes thought-provoking insights including:

• Empowering You―Social Media User, Content Creator
• In The Crosshairs: Privacy And Anonymity
• Saving Our Kids From The Abyss
• Surprise! Social Media Can Be Good For Your Mental Health
• Is AI The High-Tech Tattletale In Your Social Experience?
• Lifting the Veil On Bots and Trolls
• Facts, Opinions, Lies―Who Decides?
• Web3 Is Here―What The Heck Is It?

Mark Weinstein is a world-renowned tech entrepreneur, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking, including SuperFamily and SuperFriends, two of the earliest social networks. In 2016 he founded MeWe, the Facebook alternative with the industry’s first Privacy Bill of Rights. MeWe’s membership grew to nearly 20 million users worldwide, whose advisory board includes Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web; Steve “Woz” Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Sherry Turkle, MIT academic and tech ethics leader; and Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Mark is frequently interviewed and published in major media including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fox, CNN, BBC, PBS, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, and many more worldwide. He covers topics including social media, privacy, AI, free speech, antitrust, and protecting kids online. A leading privacy advocate, Mark’s landmark 2020 TED Talk, “The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism,” exposed the many infractions and manipulations by Big Tech, and called for a privacy revolution. Mark has also been listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy” and named “Privacy by Design Ambassador” by the Canadian government. His new book is Restoring Our Sanity Online: A Revolutionary Social Framework.

Shermer and Weinstein discuss:

• Amid growing concerns over targeting, bullying, hate, boosted misinformation, bots and trolls, AI, privacy violations, and democracy disruption, can we really “restore our sanity online?”
• As an early inventor of social networking, have you been shocked by the direction social media has taken since launching SuperFamily and SuperFriends in 1998?
• How do we combat the mental health crisis associated with social media, particularly among teens?
• How can parents take charge of the runaway train which is their kids on social media?
• You’ve said the Surgeon General’s recommendation of putting warning labels on social media won’t be effective at protecting kids. What will?
• Your book has a chapter that says social media can be good for our mental health … You must be kidding!
• As Meta, X, Snap, and other Big Tech increasingly utilize AI, how will AI impact the future of social media?
• How will AI chatbots and “AI Friends” affect our personal relationships?
• Web3 promises to fix the problems with social media—privacy, data ownership, elimination of targeting, etc. What should people know about Web3? Is that too good to be true?
• How do you envision the future of privacy and anonymity on social media?
• How do we defeat bots and trolls? Are they going to destroy democracy?
• While conducting research for the book, how did you discover the shared patterns between Big Agriculture, Big Energy, and Big Tech?
• What lessons can be gleaned from Big Ag and Big Energy that we can apply to Big Tech?
• The book’s subtitle is “A Revolutionary Social Framework” and in chapter seven you introduce “Restoration Networks.” What’s so revolutionary about these?
• Why should social platforms create a more equitable creator economy?
• How can the tenets of Conscious Capitalism, often associated with retail companies like Patagonia, be applied to social networks?
• Can social media really function successfully without Surveillance Capitalism?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss478_Neal_Stephenson_2024_10_18.mp3Download MP3Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning … Was the Command Line. He is also the coauthor, with Nicole Galland, of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. His works of speculative fiction have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and post-cyberpunk. In his fiction, he explores fields such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum), Stephenson comes from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs “propeller heads.” He holds a degree in geography and physics from Boston University, where he spent a great deal of time on the university mainframe. He lives in Seattle, Washington. As The Atlantic has recently observed, “Perhaps no writer has been more clairvoyant about our current technological age than Neal Stephenson. His novels coined the term metaverse, laid the conceptual groundwork for cryptocurrency, and imagined a geoengineered planet. And nearly three decades before the release of ChatGPT, he presaged the current AI revolution.” His new novel is Polostan, the first installment in his Bomb Light cycle.

Shermer and Stephenson discuss:

• How to write professionally
• How to write science fiction and fantasy
• How lives turn out: genes, environment and luck
• How so much of history is contingent
• No Hitler, No Atomic Bomb
• How the bomb was developed and why
• The ethics of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• The Hobbesian Trap, Security Dilemma, and the Other Guy Problem and the bomb
• Mutual Assured Destruction and why it has worked (so far)
• Cryptocurrency
• AI, ChatGPT, and the Singularity
• Mind uploading
• Human evolution and the far future of humanity
• What type of political and economic systems will we have on Mars?
• Charles Sanders Peirce and the philosophy of Fallibilism
• Platonic realism.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss477_Terry_Sejnowski_2024_10_15.mp3Download MP3In ChatGPT and the Future of AI, the sequel to The Deep Learning Revolution, Terrence Sejnowski offers a nuanced exploration of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and what their future holds. How should we go about understanding LLMs? Do these language models truly understand what they are saying? Or is it possible that what appears to be intelligence in LLMs may be a mirror that merely reflects the intelligence of the interviewer? In this book, Sejnowski, a pioneer in computational approaches to understanding brain function, answers all our urgent questions about this astonishing new technology.

Sejnowski begins by describing the debates surrounding LLMs’ comprehension of language and exploring the notions of “thinking” and “intelligence.” He then takes a deep dive into the historical evolution of language models, focusing on the role of transformers, the correlation between computing power and model size, and the intricate mathematics shaping LLMs. Sejnowski also provides insight into the historical roots of LLMs and discusses the potential future of AI, focusing on next-generation LLMs inspired by nature and the importance of developing energy-efficient technologies.

Grounded in Sejnowski’s dual expertise in AI and neuroscience, ChatGPT and the Future of AI is the definitive guide to understanding the intersection of AI and human intelligence.

Terrence J. Sejnowski is Francis Crick Chair at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the University of California at San Diego. He has published over 500 scientific papers and 12 books, including The Computational Brain with Patricia Churchland. He was instrumental in shaping the BRAIN Initiative that was announced by the White House in 2013, and he received the prestigious Gruber Prize in Neuroscience in 2022.

Sejnowski and Shermer discuss:

• Large Language Models
• ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5 and beyond
• What is AI and AGI?
• The alignment problem
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?
• What is thinking?
• How brains evolved
• Reverse engineering brains
• How language evolved
• Artificial intelligence and natural intelligence
• Emotions, mind, and sentience
• What is “mind”, “thinking”, and “consciousness”, and how do molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes?
• The hard problem of consciousness
• The self and other minds
• How would we know if an AI system was sentient?
• Can AI systems be conscious?
• Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!?
• Self-driving cars
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it
• AI as an existential threat
• Why there is no such thing as “the” singularity. There are lots of them and we’ve already experienced them and will continue to do so.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss476_Tara_Smith_2024_10_12.mp3Download MP3Situating her analyses within the broader intellectual landscape, First Amendment scholar and philosopher Tara Smith takes up the views of such historical figures as John Locke, Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, while also addressing contemporary clashes over issues ranging from speech on social media, “cancel culture,” and the implications of “religious exemptions” to the crucial difference between speech and action and the very vocabulary in which we discuss these issues, dissecting the exact meanings of “censorship” and “freedom.”

Tara Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where she has taught since 1989. A specialist in moral, legal, and political philosophy, she is author of the books Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge, 2006), Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), and Moral Rights and Political Freedom (Rowman and Littlefield 1995). Smith’s scholarly articles span such subjects as rights conflicts, the morality of money, everyday justice, forgiveness, friendship, pride, moral perfection, and the value of spectator sports.

Shermer and Smith discuss:

• What is freedom?
• What are rights?
• How are rights and freedoms won or lost?
• Private vs. government restrictions on speech
• Social media, tech companies, and censorship
• speech and expression
• Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission
• Speech – Action distinction and where the lines between speech and conduct are blurry
• Hate speech = violence?
• Is Twitter a platform or a publisher?
• Is Facebook an information service or a telecommunications company?
• Incitement to violence and the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection
• Libel and slander
• Self-censorship
• Free expression as speech (flag burning, Madonna’s videos, etc.)
• Corporate controls on speech
• Compelled speech
• How Oliver Wendell Holmes introduced the clear and present danger test, which would become an important test under First Amendment law over the coming decades.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss475_Michael_Bernstein_2024_10_08.mp3Download MP3Can beliefs make you sick? Consider “The June Bug” incident from a U.S. textile factory in the early 1960s. Many employees began to feel dizzy, had an upset stomach, and vomited. Some were even hospitalized. The illness was attributed to a mysterious bug biting workers. However, when the CDC investigated this outbreak, no bugs or any other cause of the illnesses could be identified. Instead, it appears to be an illness caused by the mind — that is, sickness due to expectation.

The June Bug story is one of many striking examples of the nocebo effect, a phenomenon best summarized as the occurrence of a harmful event that stems from expecting it. The nocebo effect plays a role in side effects for some of the most commonly prescribed medications. It provides a lens for understanding how sensationalized media reports that sound alarm about public health might even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It might even explain the mysterious symptoms associated with Havana Syndrome, during which dozens of US government employees fell ill after reportedly being exposed to an unidentified sound wave in Cuba.

We are just discovering the power behind this effect and how it can be ethically mitigated. Enlightening and startling, The Nocebo Effect is the first book dedicated to investigating this fascinating phenomenon by the foremost experts in the field.

Michael Bernstein, Ph.D., is an experimental psychologist and an Assistant Professor in The Department of Diagnostic Imaging at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. His work is focused on harnessing the placebo effect to reduce opioid use among pain patients. He is Director of the Medical Expectations Lab at Brown. He is the co-author of the new book The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick, with Charlotte Blease, Cosima Locher, and Walter Brown. https://MichaelHBernstein.com/ Twitter/X: @mh_bernstein

Shermer and Bernstein discuss:

• Placebo
• Nocebo
• Nocebo and brain imaging
• Voodoo deaths and hexes
• The psychology of placebo and nocebo effects
• The biology of placebo and nocebo effects
• The ethics of placebo and nocebo effects
• Nocebo and Covid-19
• Alternative and Complementary Medicine
• Pain, anxiety, depression and other subjective effects
• Anticipatory nausea and learning
• Risk assessment: expected dread associated + how much is known about the risk
• When Psychotherapy harms
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Side effects
• Patient-clinician interactions
• Mesmerism and Benjamin Franklin’s test
• Psychogenic illness
• Havana Syndrome.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss474_Paul_Seabright_2024_10_05.mp3Download MP3Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another—spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power.

This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call.

Paul Seabright is a Professor of Economics in the Industrial Economics Institute and Toulouse School of Economics and the University of Toulouse, France. He earned his graduate degrees in economics from the University of Oxford. He was Assistant Director of Research and a Reader in Economics at the University of Cambridge until 2001. He has also been a consultant to private sector firms, governments and international organizations including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations. He is the author of The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, and his new book The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People.

Shermer and Seabright discuss:

• What is religion?
• The landscape of religious numbers: going up or down, when and where?
• Why Americans are so much more religious than Europeans
• What motivates people to be religious despite (or perhaps because of) its costs?
• Religion provides people with meaning, purpose and community, which secularism alone often fails to deliver
• Religions as platforms, “organisations that facilitate relationships that could not [otherwise] form”
• Other “platforms” in history (markets, marriage broking, international trade)
• Popular explanations for religion pp. 180–181.
• Role(s) of religion in history and society today
• Enlightenment Humanism, Secular Humanism, and other alternatives
• Is religion and belief in God(s) adaptive or a byproduct?
• Big Gods vs. animism, polytheism, supernaturalism
• Why some religions are so much more successful than others
• Rituals
• Social Gospel vs. Prosperity Gospel
• Taxes vs. Tithing
• Group selection vs. cultural selection
• Cults and New Religious Movements
• Why most religions fail but why some succeed
• Christianity and violence
• Islam and violence
• When we colonize Mars will far future humans on other planets be religious?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss473_Max_Boot_2024_10_01.mp3Download MP3From best-selling biographer Max Boot comes this revelatory portrait, a decade in the making, of the actor-turned-politician whose telegenic leadership ushered in a transformative conservative era in American politics. Despite his fame as a Hollywood star and television host, Reagan remained a man of profound contradictions, even to those closest to him. Never resorting to either hagiography or hit job, Reagan: His Life and Legend charts his epic journey from Depression-era America to “Morning in America.” Providing fresh insight into “trickle-down economics,” the Cold War’s end, the Iran-Contra affair, and so much more, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.

Max Boot is a Russia-born naturalized American historian and foreign-policy analyst and a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has worked as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, and the Christian Science Monitor, and is now a regular columnist for the Washington Post. His New York Times bestseller, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. He is also the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present, and, controversially, of The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right. His new book is Reagan: His Life and Legend.

Shermer and Boot discuss:

• What led him to undertake this biography
• How to write a biography—with sources, and which to consider as reliable
• Early influences on Reagan’s life: family, Midwestern upbringing, education, teachers, mentors, experiences.
• Relative influence of genes, environment, and luck.
• The Lifeguard
• Depression economics influences
• Reagan’s attitudes and beliefs on social issues reflecting those of his generation
• Radio and Acting
• President of the Screen Actor’s Guild and his purported role in preventing a Communist takeover of Hollywood.
• GE pitch man
• A groundbreaking look at why Reagan left the Democratic Party, showing his reliance on conspiracy-mongering tracts, fake quotes, and statistics—and the influence of both the FBI and General Electric.
• Revelations about the role of “white backlash” politics in Reagan’s rise.
• California governor
• 1968 Presidential campaign
• 1976 Presidential campaign
• Goldwater and the state of the Republican Party when Reagan entered politics
• New evidence about the “October Surprise” and the involvement of Reagan’s aides in political skullduggery prior to the 1980 election
• Arthur Laffer and Trickledown economics
• Budget deficit
• AIDS epidemic
• Iran-Contra
• Abortion
• “Evil Empire”
• Gorbachev Geneva summit
• Gorbachev Reykjavik summit
• Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI/Star Wars)
• Reagan on nuclear weapons
• Rancho del Cielo
• An examination of how Reagan was both different from—and similar to—Donald Trump
• Hotspots: N Korea, Iran, Israel, China.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss472_Adam_Kirsch_2024_09_28.mp3Download MP3Since Hamas’s attack on Israel last October 7, the term “settler colonialism” has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues.

This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general readership. By critiquing the most important writers, texts, and ideas in the field, Adam Kirsch shows how the concept emerged in the context of North American and Australian history and how it is being applied to Israel. He examines the sources of its appeal, which, he argues, are spiritual as much as political; how it works to delegitimize nations; and why it has the potential to turn indignation at past injustices into a source of new injustices today. A compact and accessible introduction, rich with historical detail, the book will speak to readers interested in the Middle East, American history, and today’s most urgent cultural-political debates.

Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review section and has written for publications including The New Yorker, Slate, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review, Poetry, and Tablet. He lives in New York. His new book is On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice.

Shermer and Kirsch discuss:

• Settler ideology
• Settler colonialism
• Colonialism
• Decolonization
• “The colonizers came to stay—invasion is a structure not an event.” —Patrick Wolfe
• Wolfe: “logic that initially informed frontier killing transmutes into different modalities, discourses and institutional formations as it undergirds the historical development and complexification of settler society.”
• Genocide and “necropolitical transfer”
• Kirsch: “If the definition of a progressive movement is that it believes the future can be better than the past, then the ideology of settler colonialism is not progressive, because it believe the past was better than the future.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss471_Theodore_Schwartz_2024_09_24.mp3Download MP3We’ve all heard the phrase “it’s not brain surgery.” But what exactly is brain surgery? It’s a profession that is barely a hundred years old and profoundly connects two human beings, but few know how it works, or its history. How did early neurosurgeons come to understand the human brain—an extraordinarily complex organ that controls everything we do, and yet at only three pounds is so fragile? And how did this incredibly challenging and lifesaving specialty emerge?

In this warm, rigorous, and deeply insightful book, Dr. Theodore H. Schwartz explores what it’s like to hold the scalpel, wield the drill, extract a tumor, fix a bullet hole, and remove a blood clot—when every second can mean life or death. Drawing from the author’s own cases, plus media, sports, and government archives, this seminal work delves into all the brain-related topics that have long-consumed public curiosity, like what really happened to JFK, President Biden’s brain surgery, and the NFL’s management of CTE. Dr. Schwartz also surveys the field’s latest incredible advances and discusses the philosophical questions of the unity of the self and the existence of free will.

A neurosurgeon as well as a professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the busiest and most highly ranked neurosurgery centers in the world, Dr. Schwartz tells this story like no one else could. Told through anecdote and clear explanation, this is the ultimate cultural and scientific history of a literally mind-blowing human endeavor, one that cuts to the core of who we are.

Theodore Schwartz, MD, is the David and Ursel Barnes Endowed Professor of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the busiest and highest-ranked neurosurgery centers in the world. He has published over five hundred scientific articles and chapters on neurosurgery, and has lectured around the world—from Bogotá to Vienna to Mumbai—on new, minimally invasive surgical techniques that he helped develop. He also runs a basic science laboratory devoted to epilepsy research. He studied philosophy and literature at Harvard. His new book is: Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery.

Shermer and Schwartz discuss:

• Brief biographical history of how he became a brain surgeon and how you can too
• A brief anatomical lesson on the brain and nervous system
• How does anesthesia work and where does consciousness go?
• Wilder Penfield and brain mapping
• Head-on collisions and brain injuries
• Sports neurosurgery
• CTE, Football, Boxing, concussions, etc.
• Brain tumors and how to treat them: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), Meningioma
• Cancer vs. tumors
• Strokes and aneurysms
• Cell phones and brain tumors
• Famous cases: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Johnny Cochrane, John McCain, Muhammad Ali, Ted Kennedy, H.M. (Henry Molaison), Phineas Gage, Andre the Giant, Joe Biden, Jim Brady, Eva Paron, Michael J. Fox, Lance Armstrong, Natasha Richardson
• Memory loss, dementia, senility, Alzheimer’s, etc.
• Frontal lobotomies: 1935–1955 over 60,000 were performed
• The neuroscience of violence and aggression: Donta Page, Mr. Oft, Charles Whitman
• Free will and determinism
• Sentience, consciousness, and the hard problem
• The Self: Theseus’s Ship (how much of the brain would need to change for loss of self?)
• Hindsight bias and how we justify our beliefs and behaviors
• His father’s stroke and death
• Neurolink and the future of computer-brain interface technology.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss470_Colin_Wright_2024_09_21.mp3Download MP3Biologist Colin Wright joins the podcast to explore one of today’s most contentious topics: the intersection of biological sex and gender.

Drawing on his expertise in animal behavior and evolutionary biology, Colin breaks down key concepts such as biological sex, gender identity, and gender dysphoria. He also examines the shift in societal definitions of what it means to be a man or woman, and how these evolving perspectives fit with long-standing biological principles.

This session was presented at FreedomFest 2024. To see more speeches and sessions from FreedomFest, visit freedomfest.com/civl.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss469_Gary_Marcus_2024_09_17.mp3Download MP3On balance, will AI help humanity or harm it? AI could revolutionize science, medicine, and technology, and deliver us a world of abundance and better health. Or it could be a disaster, leading to the downfall of democracy, or even our extinction. In Taming Silicon Valley, Gary Marcus, one of the most trusted voices in AI, explains that we still have a choice. And that the decisions we make now about AI will shape our next century. In this short but powerful manifesto, Marcus explains how Big Tech is taking advantage of us, how AI could make things much worse, and, most importantly, what we can do to safeguard our democracy, our society, and our future.

Marcus explains the potential—and potential risks—of AI in the clearest possible terms and how Big Tech has effectively captured policymakers. He begins by laying out what is lacking in current AI, what the greatest risks of AI are, and how Big Tech has been playing both the public and the government, before digging into why the U.S. government has thus far been ineffective at reining in Big Tech. He then offers real tools for readers, including eight suggestions for what a coherent AI policy should look like—from data rights to layered AI oversight to meaningful tax reform—and closes with how ordinary citizens can push for what is so desperately needed.

Taming Silicon Valley is both a primer on how AI has gotten to its problematic present state and a book of activism in the tradition of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. It is a deeply important book for our perilous historical moment that every concerned citizen must read.

Gary Marcus is a leading voice in artificial intelligence, well known for his challenges to contemporary AI. He is a scientist and best-selling author and was founder and CEO of Geometric.AI, a machine learning company acquired by Uber. A Professor Emeritus at NYU, he is the author of five previous books, including the bestseller Guitar Zero, Kluge (one of The Economist’s eight best books on the brain and consciousness), and Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust (with Ernest Davis), one of Forbes’s seven must-read books on AI.

“Move fast and break things.” —Mark Zuckerberg, 2012

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility.” —Mark Zuckerberg, speaking to the U.S. Senate, 2018

“Generative AI systems have proven themselves again and again to be indifferent to the difference between truth and bullshit. Generative models are, borrowing a phrase from the military, ‘frequently wrong, and never in doubt.’ The Star Trek computer could be counted on to gives sound answers to sensible questions; Generative AI is a crapshoot. Worse, it is right often enough to lull us into complacency, even as mistakes invariably slip through; hardly anyone treats it with the skepticism it deserves. Something with reliability of the Star Trek computer could be world-changing. What we have now is a mess, seductive but unreliable. And too few people are willing to admit that dirty truth.” —Gary Marcus

Shermer and Marcus discuss:

• The AI we have now and the AI we should want
• AI, AGI, Generative AI, ChatGPT
• What’s the problem to be solved?
• 12 biggest threats of Generative AI
• The morality of Silicon Valley
• How Silicon Valley manipulates public opinion
• How Silicon Valley manipulates government policy
• Data rights
• Privacy
• Transparency
• Liability
• Independent oversight
• Incentives good and bad
• Private vs. Government regulation of AI
• International AI governance.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss468_Pinker_Ridley_2024_09_13.mp3Download MP3From the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the rise of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives and Artificial Intelligence, in this episode Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, and Michael Shermer challenge conventional narratives and explore how we can continue to move forward.

They discuss the state of democracy, autocracy, and the lessons learned from historical crises, while offering insights into how innovation, rationality, and education can lead us through challenging times.

This session was presented at FreedomFest 2024. To see more speeches and sessions from FreedomFest, visit freedomfest.com/civl.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss467_Matthew_Stewart_2024_09_10.mp3Download MP3Matthew Stewart is an independent philosopher and historian who has written extensively about the philosophical origins of the American republic, the history of philosophy, management theory, and the culture of inequality. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, among other publications. In recent years he has lived in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and is currently based in London. He is the author of Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic and An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America.

Shermer and Stewart discuss:

• What does the phrase “The Law of Nature and Nature’s God” mean?
• What is heretical about the origins of the American Republic?
• Religion of the founders: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine
• Ethan Allen and Thomas Young
• The Enlightenment influence on the Founding Fathers
• John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza
• Ancient Greek influences on the Founding Fathers
• Epicurus’s Dangerous Idea
• Lucretius’s “swerving” atoms
• Theism, Deism, Pantheism, Atheism
• Reason and empiricism
• Self-evident truths
• Morality and the origin of right and wrong
• Happiness and its pursuit
• The religion of freedom
• Enslaving other humans: what were these people thinking and feeling?
• Should they have known better?
• Racists or creatures of their time in which nearly everyone held such views?
• Monogenism vs. polygenism
• Abolitionism
• John Brown
• Frederick Douglass
• Theodore Parker
• Abraham Lincoln
• Civil War cause: slavery or states’ rights?
• Religious supporters of abolition: Quakers, William Wilberforce
• How did American slavery lead to civil war?
• Why did the war result in emancipation?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss466_Jeff_Kripal_2024_09_08.mp3Download MP3From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen. But they do happen—all the time. Jeffrey J. Kripal asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real. How to Think Impossibly invites us to think about these fantastic (yet commonplace) experiences as an essential part of being human, expressive of a deeply shared reality that is neither mental nor material but gives rise to both. Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Kripal interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to foster an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, and just published, also by the University of Chicago Press, How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss465_Michael_Shermer_2024_09_06.mp3Download MP3During a two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper made sensational claims about the Holocaust and World War II, with Carlson calling him “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” In this solo episode, Michael Shermer takes a critical look at the pseudohistory and historical revisionism presented by Cooper on Carlson’s show.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss464_Will_Gervais_2024_09_03.mp3Download MP3In his new book Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species, Will Gervais, PhD., a global leader in the psychological study of atheism, shows that the ubiquity of religious belief and the peculiarities of atheism are connected pieces in the puzzle of human nature. Does God exist? This straightforward question has spawned endless debate, ranging from apologists’ supposed proofs of God’s existence to New Atheist manifestos declaring belief in God a harmful delusion.

It’s undeniable that religion is a core tenet of human nature. It is also true that our overwhelmingly religious species is also as atheistic as it’s ever been. Yet, no scientific understanding of religion is complete without accounting for those who actively do not believe. In this refreshing and revelatory book, Gervais argues that religion is not an evolutionary puzzle so much as two evolutionary puzzles that can only be solved together. First is the Puzzle of Faith: the puzzle of how Homo sapiens – and Homo sapiens alone – came to be a religious species. Second is the Puzzle of Atheism: how disbelief in gods can exist within our uniquely religious species. The result is a radically cohesive theory of both faith and atheism, showing how we became a uniquely religious species, and why many are now abandoning their belief.

Through a firsthand account of breakthroughs in the scientific study of atheism, including key findings from cognitive science, cultural evolution, and evolutionary psychology, Disbelief forces a rethinking of the prevailing theories of religion and reminds both believers and atheists of the shared psychologies that set them on their distinct religious trajectories. In casual prose and with compelling examples, Gervais explains how we became religious, why we’re leaving faith behind, and how we can get along with others across the religious divides we’ve culturally evolved.

Will Gervais, PhD, is a cultural evolutionary psychologist and has been a global leader in the scientific study of atheism for over a decade. Dr. Gervais’s research has been featured in media such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, Der Speigel, Psychology Today, Vox, and Scientific American. His interdisciplinary work, lying at the intersection of cultural evolution, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, has garnered international scientific recognition. He was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science and is the recipient of the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association and the SAGE Young Scholar Award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology.

Gervais and Shermer discuss:

• What is religion?
• Theism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Deism, Pantheism, etc. defined
• How many atheists and agnostics and religious skeptics are there really?
• Atheism and morality, trust, politics, etc.
• Why are atheists so unpopular?
• Metaphysical atheism vs. epistemological atheism (or agnosticism)
• Popular nonanswers for religion and belief in God(s) (the Puzzle of Faith)
• Role(s) of religion in history and society today
• Is religion and belief in God(s) adaptive or a byproduct?
• What cognitive features of the brain are engaged in faith, religion, & belief in God?
• Patternicity, Agenticity, Sensed presence effect, essentialism, dualism, theory of mind, teleology
• Big Gods vs. animism, polytheism, supernaturalism
• Folk physics (pre-Newtonian) and biology (creationism)
• Why some religions are so much more successful than others
• Group selection vs. cultural selection
• Is religion good for society?
• Is religion good for personal health and happiness?
• When we colonize Mars will far future humans on other planets believe in God?
• Does religion need to be replaced with something?
• Enlightenment Humanism, Secular Humanism, and other alternatives.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss463_Ben_Goertzel_2024_09_01.mp3Download MP3Dr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. Born in Brazil to American parents, in 2020 after a long stretch living in Hong Kong he relocated his primary base of operations to a rural island near Seattle. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference.

Dr. Goertzel also chairs the futurist nonprofit Humanity+, serves as Chief Scientist of AI firms Rejuve, Mindplex, Cogito, and Jam Galaxy, all parts of the SingularityNET ecosystem, and serves as keyboardist and vocalist in the Jam Galaxy Band, the first-ever band led by a humanoid robot.

As Chief Scientist of robotics firm Hanson Robotics, he led the software team behind the Sophia robot; as Chief AI Scientist of Awakening Health he leads the team crafting the mind behind Sophia’s little sister Grace.

Dr. Goertzel’s research work encompasses multiple areas, including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more. He has published 25+ scientific books, ~150 technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles, and given talks at a vast number of events of all sorts around the globe.

Before entering the software industry Dr. Goertzel obtained his PhD in mathematics from Temple University in 1989 and served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. His new book is The Consciousness Explosion: A Mindful Human’s Guide to the Coming Technological and Experiential Singularity.

Shermer and Goertzel discuss:

• Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence
• General Intelligence (g) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
• The alignment problem
• Consciousness and sentience
• Zombies and the Hard Problem of Consciousness
• Data, Sophia, and other robots
• Altered States of Intelligence
• Mind uploading and the self
• How would we know if an AI system was sentient?
• Can AI systems be conscious?
• Self-driving cars
• AI dystopia
• AI utopia
• AI protopia
• UBI
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?
• Can AGI solve political and economic problems?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss462_Michael_Shermer_2024_08_30.mp3Download MP3Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. It’s no different when it comes to UFO frenzy. There is a need to separate fact from fiction in UAP claims.

In this episode, Shermer delves into the growing interest in UAPs (formerly UFOs), especially in light of UFOlogist Lue Elizondo’s book Imminent. Elizondo claims the U.S. government has long been aware of extraterrestrial intelligence, backed by reports of unidentified craft surveilling military sites. The episode explores these bold assertions and the tension between believers and skeptics, including scientists like Avi Loeb and institutions like the Department of Defense, which have disputed such claims.

Listeners interested in extraterrestrial intelligence, UFOs, and government secrecy will find this discussion compelling. Shermer reflects on historical UFO figures like Bob Lazar and Travis Walton, questioning their credibility while exploring the widespread belief in imminent “disclosure” of alien contact. Through interviews with experts and analysis of various UAP phenomena, the episode challenges listeners to discern fact from fiction, offering an intriguing examination of what could be humanity’s most profound discovery.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss461_Helen_Pluckrose_2024_08_27.mp3Download MP3The stated goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are often reasonable, if not noble—to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all. Yet, as more and more people are discovering, DEI as commonly practiced isn’t a natural extension of past civil rights movements or an ethical framework for opposing discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, etc. Rather, it is inextricably connected with an illiberal and authoritarian ideology—Critical Social Justice—that demands adherence to its tenets and punishes any dissent from its dogma.

Even the mildest questions about Critical Social Justice claims—that all white people are racists, that all underrepresented minorities are oppressed, that sex and gender differences have no biological basis, that censorship is a necessary good—are regularly met by DEI trainers and HR officers with pat commands: “Educate yourself,” “Do the work,” “Listen and learn.” At work, raises, promotions, and future employment often depend on our nodding approval of such claims. At school, grades, nominations, and awards are often contingent upon our active agreement with these beliefs. In our daily lives, Critical Social Justice ideology poses a genuine threat not only to our fundamental rights but also to the future of our democratic systems, but if we suggest this, we risk being canceled or shunned by community members. When facing a choice between silent submission and risky if ethical opposition, what is a person to do?

While a growing number of groups concerned about the nature of Critical Social Justice have begun to attack it from the top down through legal, financial, and political means, The Counterweight Handbook takes a decidedly different and novel approach. It works from the bottom up and is written to empower individuals who wish to combat Critical Social Justice in their personal and professional lives. Based on the author’s years of experience studying, exposing, and fighting Critical Social Justice ideology and advising individuals and organizations struggling with it, The Counterweight Handbook is designed to help people address Critical Social Justice problems in the most ethical and effective way possible. It not only offers principled responses to the main claims of Critical Social Justice but also teaches individuals what to do when they are asked to affirm beliefs they do not hold, undergo training in an ideology they cannot support, or submit to antiscientific testing and retraining of their “unconscious” minds. In short, it is for all of us who believe in freedom of speech and conscience, who wish to push back against the hostile work and educational environments Critical Social Justice has created, and who want to stand up for our individual liberties and universal rights.

Helen Pluckrose is a liberal political and cultural writer and was one of the founders of Counterweight. A participant in the Grievance Studies Affair probe that highlighted problems in Critical Social Justice scholarship, she is the coauthor of Cynical Theories and Social (In)justice. She lives in England and can be found on X @HPluckrose

Shermer and Pluckrose discuss:

• the problem to be solved?
• origin of the problem: post-modernism and Critical Social Justice ideology
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
• what it means to “Educate yourself,” “Do the work,” “Listen and learn.”
• top-down (Chris Rufo, Ron DeSantis) vs. bottom-up counter measures
• gender pronoun declarations
• race reckoning
• White supremacy accusations and White guilt
• antiracism
• gender ideology
• Blackness
• Critical Race Theory (CRT)
• decolonize
• discourse
• dismantle
• fragility
• intersectionality
• normativity
• positionality
• privilege
• problematic
• woke.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss460_Joshua_Blu_Buhs_2024_08_25.mp3Download MP3Flying saucers. Bigfoot. Frogs raining from the sky. Such phenomena fascinated Charles Fort, the maverick writer who scanned newspapers, journals, and magazines for reports of bizarre occurrences: dogs that talked, vampires, strange visions in the sky, and paranormal activity. His books of anomalies advanced a philosophy that saw science as a small part of a larger system in which truth and falsehood continually transformed into one another. His work found a ragged following of skeptics who questioned not only science but the press, medicine, and politics. Though their worldviews varied, they shared compelling questions about genius, reality, and authority. At the center of this community was adman, writer, and enfant terrible Tiffany Thayer, who founded the Fortean Society and ran it for almost three decades, collecting and reporting on every manner of oddity and conspiracy.

In Think to New Worlds, Joshua Blu Buhs argues that the Fortean effect on modern culture is deeper than you think. Fort’s descendants provided tools to expand the imagination, explore the social order, and demonstrate how power is exercised. Science fiction writers put these ideas to work as they sought to uncover the hidden structures undergirding reality. Avant-garde modernists—including the authors William Gaddis, Henry Miller, and Ezra Pound, as well as Surrealist visual artists—were inspired by Fort’s writing about metaphysical and historical forces. And in the years following World War II, flying saucer enthusiasts convinced of alien life raised questions about who controlled the universe.

Buhs’s meticulous and entertaining book takes a respectful look at a cast of oddballs and eccentrics, plucking them from history’s margins and spotlighting their mark on American modernism. Think to New Worlds is a timely consideration of a group united not only by conspiracies and mistrust of science but by their place in an ever-expanding universe rich with unexplained occurrences and visionary possibilities.

Joshua Blu Buhs is a scholar of the overlap of politics, biology, and ecology in twentieth-century America and has written articles that have appeared in Isis, Environmental History, The World of Genetics, and Journal of the History of Biology. His Ph.D. is in the history of science from Penn State. He is the author of Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend and The Fire Ant Wars: Nature, Science, and Public Policy in Twentieth-Century America, both published by the University of Chicago Press. His new book is Think to New Worlds: The Cultural History of Charles Fort and His Followers.

Shermer and Blu Buhs discuss:

• How he got into researching and writing about weird things
• The Fire Ant Wars and how Americans thought about nature in the second half of the 20th century (Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson)
• Bigfoot
• Charles Fort (1874–1932)
• Fortean followers
• Tiffany Thayer
• Fortean Society
• Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, and other magazines
• The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort
• Anomalies and anomaly hunting
• frogs and fishes falling from the sky, ball lightning, UFOs, cryptids (like Bigfoot), talking dogs and vampires, poltergeist events, spontaneous human combustion, levitation, unexplained disappearances, out-of-place artifacts, and highly unusual coincidences
• science fiction
• aesthetic modernism
• UFOs and UFOlogy
• Ancient aliens and von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods
• The Day the Earth Stood Still as a Christ allegory
• Dianetics, Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard
• Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods
• Skeptics and Humanists
• Conspiracies and conspiracy theories
• “modernity released the marvelous, expanded the possible ways in which humanity came into the presence of the awesome. The death of God and the rise of science as the preeminent process for creating truth opened new provinces, provided new materials for imagining, inventing, experiencing enchantment.”
• Martin Gardner published an article in the Antioch Review entitled “The Hermit Scientist,” about what we would today call pseudoscientists, and in 1952 he expanded it into a book titled In the Name of Science:
  • “(1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. (3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. (4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. (5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.”
  • “If the present trend continues, we can expect a wide variety of these men, with theories yet unimaginable, to put in their appearance in the years immediately ahead. They will write impressive books, give inspiring lectures, organize exciting cults. They may achieve a following of one—or one million. In any case, it will be well for ourselves and for society if we are on our guard against them.”
• Of Fort, Buhs reveals, “His was a radical skepticism that refused to accept anything as absolutely true or absolutely false.”
• Buhs: “Fort and Forteans played their part in the creation of this world. They eroded the distinctions between truth and falsity, undermined the authority of experts and expertise. They launched a thousand conspiracies into the national consciousness.”

A Residue of AnomaliesReview of Think to New Worlds: The Cultural History of Charles Fort and His Followers by Joshua Blu Buhs, University of Chicago Press, pub date June 24, 2024

by Michael Shermer

The “residue problem” in science means that no matter how all-encompassing a theory is there will always be a residue of anomalies for which it cannot account. The most famous case in the history of science is that Newton’s gravitational theory could not account for the precession of the planet Mercury’s orbit, subsequently explained by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Many paradigm shifts happen, in fact, when enough anomalies build up to justify a new explanatory model.

Unfortunately, residues of unexplained anomalies open the door to autodidacts to jump in with their alternative theories to mainstream science. The widely-viewed 2023 Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse, for example, follows alternative archaeologist Graham Hancock around the world as he exposes anomalies he asserts are unexplained by science and best accounted for by the lost civilization of Atlantis. Every episode of the popular History Channel series Ancient Aliens features alleged anomalies that scientists purportedly cannot explain without invoking extraterrestrials. And what were those UAP videos screened in the halls of Congress last year but Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena?

This tradition of collecting anomalies and cataloging them into paranormal, supernatural, extraterrestrial, mystical, and magical worlds just beyond the horizons of science can be traced back a century to Charles Fort (1874–1932) and his Fortean followers, which in turn shaped science fiction, avant-garde modernism, Surrealist art, and UFOlogy throughout the 20th century, skillfully recounted in a compelling narrative by cultural historian and author Joshua Blu Buhs, whose previous book, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend, set the tone for this deeper dive into who and what gave rise to the original New Age.

Fort’s research methodology—more fully developed and proselytized by the writer and adman Tiffany Thayer, who went on to found the Fortean Society—is what today is called “anomaly hunting.” Intrepid would-be researchers rummage through scientific books, journal articles, magazine features, and newspaper stories for anything that doesn’t quite seem to fit with mainstream science. Fort’s original anomaly hunting expeditions netted him a plethora of weird things for which scientists had no explanation: frogs and fishes falling from the sky, ball lightning, UFOs, cryptids (like Bigfoot), talking dogs and vampires, poltergeist events, spontaneous human combustion, levitation, unexplained disappearances, out-of-place artifacts, and highly unusual coincidences.

Fort and his followers—Forteans, as they called themselves—“had their largest effect on the practices of science fiction, aesthetic modernism, and UFOlogy, pursuits seemingly peripheral to the mainstream,” Buhs explains in embedding his subject in time and place, and contrasting the movement he traces with that of the world of early 20th-century science. Buhs’ thesis—well supported and cogently argued—is that the belief in “modernity” as a coldly secular and mechanically scientific worldview devoid of wonder is wrong. On the contrary, “modernity released the marvelous, expanded the possible ways in which humanity came into the presence of the awesome. The death of God and the rise of science as the preeminent process for creating truth opened new provinces, provided new materials for imagining, inventing, experiencing enchantment.” The anomalies compiled by Fort and Forteans served as “inspiration for those who tried to imagine the future,” one that they could create “rather than having it thrust upon the world.”

Not everyone was so influenced by Fort and Foreanism. In 1950, the science writer Martin Gardner published an article in the Antioch Review entitled “The Hermit Scientist,” about what we would today call pseudoscientists, and in 1952 he expanded it into a book titled In the Name of Science with the descriptive subtitle “An entertaining survey of the high priests and cultists of science, past and present” (later republished as Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science and now considered a classic in modern skepticism). Said cultists were none other than Forteans and their ideological offspring, about whom Gardner upbraided as cranks, which he characterized thusly: “(1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. (3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. (4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. (5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.”

This mid-century encounter established a tension between believers (represented by Fort and Forteans of all stripes) and skeptics (represented by Gardner and others worried not only about Fortean claims but additional paranormal and occult beliefs). “If the present trend continues,” Gardner concluded, “we can expect a wide variety of these men, with theories yet unimaginable, to put in their appearance in the years immediately ahead. They will write impressive books, give inspiring lectures, organize exciting cults. They may achieve a following of one—or one million. In any case, it will be well for ourselves and for society if we are on our guard against them.”

Nevertheless, as Buhs notes, Garnder was a “mysterian”—those who believe there are some mysteries that will never be explained by science, such as consciousness, free will, and God—unwilling to completely dismiss all Fortean claims outright. And this opened the door to a different form of skepticism. Of Fort, Buhs reveals, “His was a radical skepticism that refused to accept anything as absolutely true or absolutely false.”

The problem with such enchanted thinking in which there is no clear boundary between science and pseudoscience, between the natural and the supernatural, between truth and falsehood, is today’s collapse in confidence in our institutions, from science and medicine to politics and the media. “Fort and Forteans played their part in the creation of this world,” Buhs concludes his cultural history. “They eroded the distinctions between truth and falsity, undermined the authority of experts and expertise. They launched a thousand conspiracies into the national consciousness.” Fort’s playful anomaly hunting “had been replaced by Thayer’s acerbic nihilism, which became omnipresent and decoupled from any need to compile evidence or craft arguments.” As a result, a century after Fort’s swerve away from the scientism of the modern world, we have theories that consist of only two words, “Fake News!”, one word, “Rigged!” and even one letter, “Q”.

In the end, science needs outsiders and mavericks who poke and prod and push accepted theories until they either collapse or are reinforced even stronger. But it also needs standards of evidence and norms of objectivity, truth telling, accountability, and professionalism. Unfortunately, outsiders like Forteans and their modern descendants tend to fall far short of these standards and norms.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss459_Michael_Shermer_2024_08_23.mp3Download MP3As if 2024 couldn’t get any weirder, tensions in the Middle East have escalated with the United States sending one of our nuclear submarines to the Mediterranean as a deterrent signal to Iran that they better think twice about attacking Israel. That sub, the Ohio-class USS Georgia, carries non-nuclear cruise missiles.

But 14 of our 18 Ohio-class submarines have nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles—each sub has in its belly the nuclear equivalent of all the bombs dropped in World War II. Multiply that by 14 and let your imagination be properly staggered.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have pushed into Russian territory and Putin is outraged at the invasion. How far can Ukraine go before Putin uses his battlefield tactical nukes in response?

In this solo episode, Michael Shermer discusses the threat of nuclear annihilation and explores the evolutionary origins of our moral emotions and logic of deterrence based on game theory.

Focus of the analysis: the need to reduce nuclear stockpiles and shifting the taboo from using to owning nuclear weapons.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss458_Richard_Reeves_2024_08_20.mp3Download MP3What’s wrong with boys and men these days?

Boys and men are struggling. Profound economic and social changes of recent decades have many losing ground in the classroom, the workplace, and in the family. While the lives of women have changed, the lives of many men have remained the same or even worsened. Our attitudes, our institutions, and our laws have failed to keep up. Conservative and progressive politicians, mired in their own ideological warfare, fail to provide thoughtful solutions.

The father of three sons, a journalist, and the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, Richard V. Reeves has spent twenty-five years worrying about boys both at home and work. His book, Of Boys and Men, along with his American Institute for Boys and Men, tackles the complex and urgent crisis of boyhood and manhood. Reeves looks at the structural challenges that face boys and men and offers fresh and innovative solutions that turn the page on the corrosive narrative that plagues this issue. Of Boys and Men argues that helping the other half of society does not mean giving up on the ideal of gender equality.

Reeves says that gender equality is not a zero-sum game. We can do more for boys and men without doing less for women and girls. We can be passionate about women’s rights, and compassionate towards the struggles of boys and men. Of course there remain many gender gaps where women and girls remain at a disadvantage, especially in terms of pay, senior positions of leadership, access to venture capital, and so on. But in advanced economies, there are also gender gaps where boys and men have now fallen behind, especially if they are Black or from a lower-income background.

Richard Reeves is the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Before founding AIBM in 2023, Reeves was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution where he focused on policies related to economic inequality, racial justice, social mobility, and boys and men. Reeves is the author of several books, including Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to do About It and Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to do About It. Inspired by his own experiences as a father and policy expert, Richard founded the American Institute for Boys and Men to bring awareness to the challenges facing boys and men today and to develop evidence-based solutions. In June, philanthropist Melinda French Gates announced she will be donating over $1B over the next two years to support women’s rights, and one of the recipients was the American Institute for Boys and Men founded by Richard Reeves to the tune of $20 million.

Shermer and Reeves discuss:

• The gender gap in higher education is wider today than it was in 1972, when Title IX was passed, but the other way round, with men earning only 42 percent of degrees
• In the average school district, boys are almost a grade level behind girls in English language arts (there is no gap in Math)
• The risk of suicide is four times higher for boys and men than their female peers and has risen by more than a third among younger men since 2010
• Male deaths before the age of 65 resulted in over 4 million years of potential life lost in 2022, three times the number for women
• Employment rates among Black men are lower than for white men, white women, and Black women
• Couples whose first child is a daughter are less likely to have more children than those whose firstborn is a son.
• Adoptive parents are willing to pay about $20,000 more for a girl than a boy, according to one U.S. study.
• Mothers of sons are often treated as if they have contracted a chronic disease, as Ruth Whippman reports in her book BoyMom. When she told a friend that her third child, conceived through in vitro fertilization, was going to be her third son, the response was: “I could understand it for a girl, but why go through all that just for another boy?”
• Progressive left excoriating their “toxic masculinity” and a reactionary right telling them to “man up” and resist the “feminization” of society
• Ruth Whippman’s Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture by Niobe Way talks about the “Boy Code.” This code consists in the privileging of certain masculine attributes, including “stoicism, independence, assertiveness, thinking, and crunching numbers,” and the devaluation of “soft” capacities, such as “vulnerability, dependency, sensitivity, feeling, and the analyses of words and language.” She also indicts the Boy Code for a range of other social and economic pathologies. “‘Boy’ culture is rooted in ideologies that intersect with one another,” she writes, “including but not limited to patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia.” Ms. Way laments the “masculine bias that undergirds neoliberalism” and claims that “because ‘boy’ culture is in bed with capitalism, money is valued over love.”

However:

• Income inequality: why do women make .84 cents on the dollar compared to men
• Fortune 500 CEOs: only 10.4 percent are women
• Congress: 72 percent men, 28 percent women
• I thought the future was female?
• Education
• Work/Labor market
• Family
• Marriage
• Divorce/custody/spousal support/child support
• What the political left gets wrong about boys and men
• What the political right gets wrong about boys and men
• Solutions: Fatherhood as an independent institution.

“In a zero-sum political environment, merely drawing attention to the problems of boys and men can be seen as somehow downplaying the ongoing challenges facing girls and women. This is why Democrats, in particular, are so reluctant to directly address male issues. That is a recipe for bad politics…”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss457_Elizabeth_Weiss_2024_08_17.mp3Download MP3Archaeologist Elizabeth Weiss’s new book, On the Warpath, is an autobiographical account of her storied career on the front lines of the culture war in our colleges and universities. Her opposition to the reburial of Native American skeletal remains, her insistence that indigenous knowledge is not science but myth, and her fight against wokeism and political correctness in academia exposed her to numerous controversies and cancel culture campaigns, and a court case.

A photograph of Weiss with a skull — as natural to anthropologists as a doctor being pictured with a stethoscope — led to her university shutting her out of the collection and changing the locks. This became an international news story, as did the American Anthropological Association canceling one of her presentations because she explained that a skeleton’s sex is binary and not gender fluid.

This hard-hitting and often humorous book tells the story of Dr. Weiss’s fight for science against superstition, and her attempts to promote free speech and academic freedom. It also exposes the current rot in today’s universities, through the lens of her battles against day-to-day absurdities. These include an attempt to bar “menstruating personnel” (formerly known as women) from the curation facility, a campaign to ban research on ancient Carthaginian remains because the individuals concerned never consented to photography, and a plan to declare X-rays sacred, so that they can be repatriated to Native Americans (who may actually be Mexicans), prior to being burned or buried.

Elizabeth Weiss is a controversial and world-renowned anthropology professor, specializing in the analysis of human skeletal remains. For much of her career she was based at San Jose State University, where she curated one of the largest collections of skeletal remains in the US. She is the author of numerous books and articles, and she played an essential role in bringing the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition “What Does it Mean to be Human?” to the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s been featured in the New York Times, Science and USA Today, and has been interviewed on Fox News and Newsmax. She currently lives in New York City, where she holds a visiting fellowship with Heterodox Academy.

Shermer and Weiss discuss:

• How she became interested in archaeology and when her field became politicized
• Whatever happened to Kennewick Man, and who was he anyway?
• When studying bones, why sex is binary
• How wokeness has ruined anthropology and archaeology
• The anthropology wars of the 1990s and the archaeology wars of the 2020s
• Why science is never complete and so burying fossils after a preliminary scientific analysis is inappropriate
• Why the fossil remains of most Native American sites have tenuous or no connection whatsoever to modern tribal peoples living nearby
• The peopling of the Americas and what the consensus is on how long ago migrations began
• Alternative archaeology and how scientists handle anomalous findings (e.g., 130,000-year old Mammoth fossils in San Diego that suggest they may have been butchered by humans)
• Why archaeologists who support cultural relativism and respect for other people’s origin stories do not apply that same attitude toward, say, Christian creationists or Mormon creation stories
• How she has been discriminated against as a woman researcher by some Native American groups (and why her otherwise liberal or progressive colleagues don’t defend her here)
• Her lawsuit against San Jose State University for defaming her as a “racist” and blocking her from further scientific study of the fossil collection she has curated for 17 years
• What’s behind cancel culture and identity politics
• The future of archaeology on its present trajectory toward the politicization of science.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss456_Sara_Walker_2024_08_13.mp3Download MP3What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like.

In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. This is an urgent issue for efforts to make life from scratch in laboratories here on Earth and missions searching for life on other planets.

Walker proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life. She invites us into a world of maverick scientists working without a map, seeking not just answers but better ways to formulate the biggest questions we have about the universe. The book culminates with the bold proposal of a new theory for identifying and classifying life, one that applies not just to biological life on Earth but to any instance of life in the universe. Rigorous, accessible, and vital, Life as No One Knows It celebrates the mystery of life and the explanatory power of physics.

Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. She is also a fellow of the Berggruen Institute and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the recipient of the Stanley L. Miller Early-Career Award for her research on the origin of life, and her research team at ASU is internationally regarded as being among the leading labs aiming to build a fundamental theory for understanding what life is. Her research has been featured in Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, and a variety of other international outlets.

Shermer and Walker discuss:

• Defining life
• Defining the self
• Defining the individual organism
• Materialism, vitalism, idealism, and Platonic ideas
• Where are the laws of nature?
• Is the universe mathematical?
• Why we need a paradigm shift in origins of life research
• Assembly theory and what it predicts
• Phase transitions in the origin and evolution of life
• The hard problem of consciousness
• Free will, volition, combatibilism, determinism
• What’s wrong with current definitions of life, self, and individual?
• Possible theories for how life originated on Earth
• Symbiogenesis: from Procaryote to Eucaryote cells
• Searching for biosignatures on exoplanets
• Dyson spheres and other technosignatures
• Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project
• What might aliens be like?
• Kardashev scale of civilizations
• Deities for Atheists, Skygods for Skeptics: aliens as gods and the search as religion.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss455_Andrew_Chow_2024_08_10.mp3Download MP3As cryptocurrency rose in popularity during the pandemic, new converts bought into the idea that crypto would not only make them rich, but would usher in imminent revolutions across art, finance, politics, and gaming. Cryptocurrency caught the zeitgeist through figures like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who only two years later would be convicted of one of the most calamitous acts of financial fraud in U.S. history.

During his meteoric rise, Sam Bankman-Fried outflanked idealists in the movement like Vitalik Buterin, who sought to build fairer, more democratic systems through Ethereum. Bankman-Fried pursued a growth-obsessed, by-any-means approach to crypto, which proved seductive to those who just wanted to get rich. But this Silicon Valley-like approach also drove the creation of a spate of high-risk financial instruments that mirrored those of the 2008 financial crisis. Accused of misleading investors and mishandling funds, Bankman-Fried became a target of prosecutors.

Now, Cryptomania unfolds the tumultuous twenty months inside this male-dominated, overhyped industry that led to its downfall. Drawing on exclusive reporting and an extensive network in the global NFT community, Andrew Chow chronicles the battle for crypto’s soul, and the human toll of its economic meltdown—from the conmen and eccentrics driving the bubble to the victims caught in its burst.

Andrew R. Chow is a correspondent for Time who covers technology, culture, and business. He has written four Time cover stories, including about the impacts of the AI corporate arms race and a prescient profile of Vitalik Buterin months before the 2022 crypto crash. He has previously written for The New York Times, Pitchfork, and NBC News. His first book is Cryptomania: Hype, Hope and the Fall of a Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire.

Shermer and Chow discuss:

• What is money?
• Fiat money without a gold standard
• Cash, coins, and credit cards
• Bitcoin and crypto currencies as the next step in financial transactions
• Crypto’s utopian philosophies
• What triggered crypto’s pandemic-era bull run.
• How the popularity of Non-Fungible Token (NFTs), served as a gateway to crypto, helping to fuel its rise—and then became one of its victims
• How NFTs were originally about the democratization of artistic creation and had the potential to help artists across the globe
• Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) backstory, his interest in “effective altruism” and the “earn-to-give” philosophy, and his early career at a Wall Street trading firm where he developed his obsession with taking huge risks
• Did SBF believe his lies? Was he self-deceived?
• How SBF used his autistic-like behavior to convince people he was a misunderstood genius
• Risk-neutral behavior and crypto
• Effective altruism, utilitarianism, and deontological ethics
• Comparisons of SBF with Elizabeth Holmes
• SBF’s arrest and dramatic trial. Rather than plea guilty and take a deal, Sam, true to his risk-taking nature, gambled it all and took his case to trial
• The parallels between crypto and the problematic financial system it was meant to replace
• While crypto promised to dislodge predatory middlemen, all it did was create new ones, with less oversight and many of the same painful fees
• How the 2022 crypto crash closely mirrored the 2008 financial crisis. The 2008 bubble had been caused by risky mortgage loans repackaged into financial derivatives. The 2022 crypto crash was likewise brought down by hidden, interconnected chains of leverage, in which hedge funds, exchanges, and lenders played dangerous money games because they thought the market might keep expanding forever.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss454_Richard_Dawkins_2024_08_06.mp3Download MP3An exquisitely camouflaged lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones “painted” on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of an ancient desert, a world in which its ancestors survived. Such descriptions are more than skin deep, however. They penetrate the very warp and woof of the entire animal.

In this groundbreaking exploration of the power of Darwinian evolution and what it can reveal about the past, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behavior, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book—an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. In the future, a zoologist presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to decode its ancestral history, to read its unique “book of the dead.” Such readings are already uncovering the remarkable ways animals overcome obstacles, adapt to their environments, and, again and again, develop remarkably similar ways of solving life’s problems.

From the author of The Selfish Gene comes a revolutionary, richly illustrated book that unlocks the door to a past more vivid, nuanced, and fascinating than anything we have seen.

Richard Dawkins was the inaugural Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His numerous books include the best-selling The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and The Blind Watchmaker. He also wrote The Magic of Reality, The Ancestor’s Tale, Unweaving the Rainbow, Climbing Mount Improbable, and The Extended Phenotype. He lives in Oxford, UK. His new book is The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, which is beautifully illustrated on nearly every page by Jana Lenzová. Jana Lenzová is a translator and illustrator and is acclaimed for her work on Dawkins’s book Flights of Fancy, about the evolution of flight. She lives in Oxford, UK.

Shermer and Dawkins discuss:

• History as a science: archaeology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, geology, cosmology, human history, genetic book of the dead
• Genetic Book of the Dead or Phenotypic Book of the Dead?
• Is this a bookend with The Selfish Gene?
• Horned lizard of the Mojave desert
• QR codes, genetic codes, computer codes…information as a proxy for past environments
• Sir D’Arcy Thompson: ‘Everything is the way it is because it got that way.’ Dawkins: “The genome of every individual is a sample of the gene pool of the species. The gene pool got to be the way it is over many generations, partly through random drift, but more pertinently through a process of non-random sculpture. The sculptor is natural selection, carving and whittling the gene pool until it – and the bodies that are its outward and visible manifestation – are the way they are.”
• The species as averaging computer: The genetic book of the dead is a written description of the world of no particular ancestral individual more than another. It is a description of the environments that sculpted the whole gene pool.
• Our human palimpsest has ‘quadruped’ boldly written in a firm hand, then over-written all too superficially with the tracery of a new description – biped.
• Intermediate stages of evolution revealed by palimpsests: “Galápagos marine iguanas are proficient swimmers, but they can manage a surprising turn of speed on land too, when fleeing snakes. All these animals show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to becoming dedicated mariners like whales, dugongs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs.”
• Double doubling back: land and sea tortoises
• Apply this to fossil species of tortoises to determine where they lived, to “read” the ancestral environment
• “Constraints on perfection” older scripts of the palimpsest restrain newer scripts (legacy of history): “buried deep in embryology and deep in history” = “buried deep under layers of younger scripts in the palimpsest”
• Vertebrate retina installed back to front
• Wasteful detour of the laryngeal nerve
• Blind spot in the retina
• Panda’s thumb
• Vertebrate skeleton: spinal column, skull and tail at the two ends, column of serially segmented vertebrae, four limbs consisting of a single long bone (humerus or femur), two parallel bones (radius/ulna), cluster of smaller bones (digits), usually 5
• Pseudogenes/junk genes: the genetic palimpsest (computer disc analogy)
• Reverse engineering
• Adaptationism
• Good enough vs. optimal (satisficing), QWERTY
• Transitional fossils
• Constraints on Perfection
• Common problems, common solutions: evolutionary convergence
• Matt Ridley’s How Innovation Works and implications for how evolution works
• What it’s like to be a bat
• False colors in astronomical photographs and fMRI brain scans
• The Middle World of our evolutionary past and constraints on cognition.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss453_Greg_Eghigian_2024_08_03.mp3Download MP3Roswell, 1947. Washington, DC, 1952. Quarouble, 1954. New Hampshire, 1961. Pascagoula, 1973. Petrozavodsk, 1977. Copley Woods, 1983.

Explore how sightings of UFOs and aliens seized the world’s attention and discover what the fascination with flying saucers and extraterrestrial visitors says about our changing views on science, technology, and the paranormal.

In the summer of 1947, a private pilot flying over the state of Washington saw what he described as several pie pan-shaped aircraft traveling in formation at remarkably high speed. Within days, journalists began referring to the objects as “flying saucers.” Over the course of that summer, Americans reported seeing them in the skies overhead. News quickly spread, and within a few years, flying saucers were being spotted across the world. The question on everyone’s mind was, what were they? Some new super weapon in the Cold War? Strange weather patterns? Optical illusions? Or perhaps it was all a case of mass hysteria? Some, however, concluded they could only be one thing: spacecrafts built and piloted by extraterrestrials. The age of the unidentified flying object, the UFO, had arrived.

Greg Eghigian tells the story of the world’s fascination with UFOs and the prospect that they were the work of visitors from outer space. While accounts of great wonders in the sky date back to antiquity, reports of UFOs took place against the unique backdrop of the Cold War and space age, giving rise to disputed government inquiries, breathtaking news stories, and single-minded sleuths. After the Flying Saucers Came traces how a seemingly isolated incident sparked an international drama involving shady figures, questionable evidence, suspicions of conspiracy, hoaxes, new religions, scandals, unsettling alien encounters, debunkers, and celebrities. It examines how descriptions, theories, and debates about unidentified flying objects and alien abduction changed over time and how they appeared in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Russia. And it explores the impact UFOs have had on our understanding of space, science, technology, and ourselves up through the present day.

Replete with stories of the people who have made up the ufology community, the military and defense units that investigate them, the scientists and psychologists who have researched these unexplained encounters, and the many novels, movies, TV shows, and websites that have explored these phenomena, After the Flying Saucers Came speaks to believers and skeptics alike.

Greg Eghigian is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Pennsylvania State University. An expert on the history of the abnormal and the paranormal in the modern world, his research has been supported by NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He is the author of The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth Century Germany and the editor of The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health, among other works. His new book is After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.

Shermer and Eghigian discuss:

• Separating two questions: Are they out there? Have they come here?
• SETI science vs. UFO/UAP science
• Will aliens look anything like us? Convergent vs. contingent evolution
• What alien intelligence might be like: biological, digital, or otherwise?
• Bayesian reasoning about UFOs and UAPs
• The U.S. military UAP videos and what they represent
• The Disclosure Project from the U.S. government about UFOs and UAPs
• Projects Sign, Blue Book, Cyclops, Grudge
• AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program)
• UFOs as mythology and myth making
• UFO waves and flaps in history and what explains them
• The UFO movement and what drives it
• Government interests in UFO
• NAZI UFOs, CIA UFOs, etc.
• Why aliens matter.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss452_Joshua_Coleman_2024_07_30.mp3Download MP3Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent’s life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren.

As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible.

While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman’s insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.

Joshua Coleman, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice and Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. A frequent guest on NPR and Today, his advice has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Chicago Tribune and other publications. A popular conference speaker, he has given talks to the faculties at Harvard, the Weill Cornell Department of Psychiatry and other academic institutions. Dr. Coleman is co-editor with historian Stephanie Coontz of seven online volumes of Unconventional Wisdom: News You Can Use: a compendium of noteworthy research on the contemporary family. He is the father of three adult children, has a teenage grandson and lives with his wife in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of The Marriage Makeover: Finding Happiness in Imperfect Harmony. His latest book is Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.

Shermer and Coleman discuss:

• Coleman’s personal experience with estrangement
• marriage and divorce: generational trends
• Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, Shrier’s Bad Therapy, Twenge’s Generations
• finding happiness in imperfect marriage
• When should couples stay together for the kids or divorce?
• What does it mean to be estranged?
• parent’s perspective vs. the adult child’s perspective
• divorce and estrangement
• causes of estrangement:
  • rising rates of individualism
  • an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness
  • growing economic insecurity
  • historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth
• narcissism and parentification
• mental illness and addiction
• psychotherapy: good and bad
• gender identity, sexuality, religion, politics, personality clashes
• sons-in-law, daughters-in-law
• cult of one
• estranged siblings
• estrangement and inheritance
• estranged grandparents
• reconciliation and abandonment
• how lives turn out.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss451_David_Lipsky_2024_07_27.mp3Download MP3In 1956, The New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE’S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.

With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors―Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla―who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes.

Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy―one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.

David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Magazine Writing, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, and many others. He contributes to NPR’s All Things Considered, and is the recipient of a Lambert Fellowship, a Media Award from GLAAD, and a National Magazine Award. He’s the author of the novel The Art Fair; a collection, Three Thousand Dollars; and the bestselling nonfiction book Absolutely American: Four Years at Westpoint, which was a Time magazine Best Book of the Year. His book, The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, is just out in paperback.

Shermer and Lipsky discuss:

• how he became a professional writer and how you can become one too
• the scientists who first sounded the alarm about climate change: Roger Revelle, Charles Keeling, James Hansen, Michael Mann
• when there was science consensus that global warming is real and human caused
• how George H.W. Bush was on board with combatting global warming
• Obama’s dilemma over which cause to back: climate change or healthcare?
• climate change as a collection action problem
• climate skeptics: S. Fred Singer, Fred Seitz, Jim Tozzi, Lord Christopher Monckton, Patrick Michaels
• Climategate
• strategies of global warming skeptics
• connection between cigarette smoking/tobacco industry and climate change
• when the politicization of climate change began
• what is to be done now.

The five basic questions about climate change:

1. Is the Earth getting warmer?
2. Is human activity the primary driver of the warming?
3. How much warmer is it going to get?
4. What are the effects of the warming?
5. What should we do about it?

Climate concensus (the 97% figure)Here’s what Dr. Shermer wrote in Scientific American:

A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by John Cook, Dana Nucitelli, and their colleagues examined 11,944 climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that stated a position on AGW, 97.1 percent concluded that climate change is real and human caused. What about the three percent? What if they’re right? In a 2015 paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad, Dana Nucitelli, and their colleagues examined the three percent and found “a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes.” That is, instead of the three percent converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything. “There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming” Dana Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015 commentary in The Guardian. “Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that’s overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.” For example, one skeptical paper attributed climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors considered they had to throw out 6,000 years’ worth of earlier data.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss450_Sebastian_Junger_2024_07_23.mp3Download MP3For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.

Sebastian Junger is The New York Times bestselling author of Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and codirector of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting. Here is how a Wall Street Journal reviewer described him:

Sebastian Junger has lived multiple lives and almost died in many of them. There was his accident while working for a tree-felling company that inspired him to research a book on dangerous jobs, which ultimately became The Perfect Storm (1997). There was the time he almost drowned while surfing. Then there was his work as an embedded journalist in Afghanistan, where machine-gun fire missed him by inches. Later, there was the assignment he did not take, to war-torn Libya, which claimed the life of his frequent collaborator and close friend, the British photographer Tim Hetherington.

His new book is In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face-to-Face with the Idea of an Afterlife, a book-length memento mori: remember, you are going to die.

Shermer and Junger discuss:

• how he became a professional writer and journalist
• his religious background and current beliefs even after his near-death experience
• what happened to him and how it changed his life
• NDEs and OBEs
• how the brain works under hallucinations
• consciousness and altered states of consciousness
• sensed presence effect
• sleep paralysis
• why there is no “proof” of an afterlife
• what it would be like to live forever
• what belief in life after death does for people
• empirical truths vs. mythic truths
• longevity and how to live longer.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss449_Yuval_Levin_2024_07_20.mp3Download MP3Common ground is hard to find in today’s politics. In a society teeming with irreconcilable political perspectives, many people have grown frustrated under a system of government that constantly demands compromise. More and more on both the right and the left have come to blame the Constitution for the resulting discord. But the Constitution is not the problem we face; it is the solution.

Blending engaging history with lucid analysis, conservative scholar Yuval Levin’s American Covenant recovers the Constitution’s true genius and reveals how it charts a path to repairing America’s fault lines. Uncovering the framers’ sophisticated grasp of political division, Levin showcases the Constitution’s exceptional power to facilitate constructive disagreement, negotiate resolutions to disputes, and forge unity in a fractured society. Clear-eyed about the ways that contemporary politics have malfunctioned, Levin also offers practical solutions for reforming those aspects of the constitutional order that have gone awry.

Hopeful, insightful, and rooted in the best of our political tradition, American Covenant celebrates the Constitution’s remarkable power to bind together a diverse society, reassuring us that a less divided future is within our grasp.

Yuval Levin is the director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at the New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. His previous books include The Fractured Republic and A Time to Build. A former member of the White House domestic policy staff under George W. Bush, he lives in Maryland.

Shermer and Levin discuss:

• Trump assassination attempt: conspiracy or incompetence?
• Biden cognitive infirmities and why the party can’t replace him
• Out of 340 million Americans why did we end up with these two guys?
• why we have a two party system
• why the country is more polarized than ever before
• historically divided elections: 1800, 1824
• the unique genius of the founding fathers
• human nature and how politics builds on it
• how liberals and conservatives differ in their view of human nature (and thus politics)
• what is unique about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
• The Federalist Papers
• why the three branches of government—legislative, executive, judicial—were established
• what the founders got right and what they got wrong.

Notes

“Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything—high and low and, most especially, high—lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away.” —Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter, 2013

“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.” —John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” —James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51

In Federalist No. 10, Madison outlined the problem with competing factions in a direct democracy (“a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest…”):

“[A] pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss448_Michael_Shermer_2024_07_17.mp3Download MP3Why do people believe the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was a conspiracy?

The assassination attempt on President Donald Trump on July 13 has already spawned a bevy of conspiracy theories. The blood on his ear was that of a theatrical gel pack, which you can supposedly see in his hand as he touches his ear. Trump’s defiant response was staged, as evidenced by the fact that the Secret Service let him back up after tackling him to the ground. The Secret Service let it happen on purpose (LIHOP in conspiracy circles) by waiting for the assassin to take his shot before returning fire. The ladder for the shooter to get on the roof was planted by covert operatives. This was yet another hit ordered by Vladimir Putin. The Chinese want to make sure Trump doesn’t return to the Presidency so they can take Taiwan. The shooter was part of Antifa. Never-Trumper Republicans were behind it. It was a false flag operation.

It is early still, and there is much we do not know about Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, but the odds are long that he was a lone actor and not part of a conspiracy. The 20-year old was, in fact, described by acquaintances as a “loner” in high school who was bullied and had “a few friends” but “didn’t have a whole friend group.” He was a registered Republican but donated $15 to the Democratic Progressive Turnout Project in 2021. He had possession of his father’s legally-purchased AR-15 style rifle, and had in his car dozens of rounds of ammunition and bomb-making materials. Most revealingly, Crooks was allegedly rejected by his high school riflery club for being “comically bad” with a gun. Does this sound like the profile of a hitman that a crack team of conspirators would contract with to assassinate a former president?

To be sure, there are a number legitimate questions surrounding the Trump assassination attempt that do not involve conspiracies:

1. Why did the cop who confronted the shooter on the roof not have his gun at the ready so he could engage him instead of standing down?
2. The shooter appears to have accessed the rooftop via a large ladder, but how did that ladder get there in the first place?
3. The building on which Crooks was perched was, in fact, a staging area for local police, so how did they miss the would-be assassin climbing onto the roof?
4. Since the Secret Service sharpshooter killed the assassin within seconds of shots fired, why did he not take the shot first?
5. Why did the Secret Service allow Trump to jump back up to pump his fist and mouth “fight fight fight” to the crowd when they should have whisked him away to his bullet-proof SUV?
6. Why did the police not take seriously all the bystanders who saw the gunman on the roof and alerted them about it.

These “BlueAnon” conspiracy theories, so named for their doppleganger echo of QAnon conspiracism, are as predictable as they are irrational. The day before the assassination attempt, in fact, I was in attendance as a speaker at the annual Freedom Fest conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, along with Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who famously believes that the CIA assassinated his uncle John F. Kennedy and his father Robert F. Kennedy. The CIA has done some questionable things in foreign countries in the name of national interests there, but murdering their own president and possible future president? Why do otherwise rational people believe such seemingly irrational things?

In my book, Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, I attempt to answer this question by outlining a number of cognitive and emotional factors at work, including:

Event magnitude. The larger the event the more conspiracism surrounds it, as people invest more time and energy into everything that happened surrounding the event in search of some deeper cause. The assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, and terrorist attacks like 9/11, are so large in scope and interest that they draw our attention to examine every detail so scrupulously that everything becomes pregnant with meaning.

Proportionality bias. Large events need large causes. The Holocaust was one of the worst genocides in history and it was caused by one of the worst political regimes in history. There’s a proportionality balance there. The assassination of President Lincoln by a cabal of southern supporters in hopes of reigniting the South’s “war of independence” feels balanced. That JFK, MLK, and RFK were assassinated by lone gunmen, or that Princess Diana’s death in a car crash was the result of drunk driving and her not wearing a seatbelt, or that 9/11 was orchestrated by 19 guys with box cutters, doesn’t feel proportional, so we turn to deeper conspiratorial causes.

Anomaly hunting. Large events lead people to look for anything unusual, especially if it is unexplainable, then glomming on to that anomaly as “evidence” of a conspiracy. How did that ladder get there for the Trump shooter to climb up on the roof? Why didn’t that police officer stop the shooter when he confronted him? Why didn’t the Secret Service take out the shooter before he shot at Trump? Why was Trump allowed to jump back up to make a fist pump after being shot?

Personal incredulity. If I can’t think of an explanation for anomaly X besides a conspiracy, then that proves there is a conspiracy.

Hindsight Bias. The tendency to reconstruct the past to fit with present knowledge. Once an event has occurred, we look back and reconstruct how it happened, why it had to happen that way and not some other way, and why we should have seen it coming all along.

Patternicity and agenticity. The tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise, and to infuse those patterns with intentional agents, leads to conspiratorial cognition.

Uncertainty bias. In the early days of a major event much is unknown, and that leads people to fill in the blanks with whatever comes to mind.

Teleological thinking. The belief that everything happens for a reason and nothing of importance happens by chance.

With all of these factors at work, it was inevitable that within minutes of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump conspiricism would flood social media. While it is not completely irrational to believe in some conspiracy theories—given that conspiracies do happen and it is often better to be safe than sorry—it is very likely that the attempt to kill President Trump was not part of some nefarious cabal and instead was the act of an unhinged lone actor. Keep in mind that in U.S. history four presidents have been assassinated while in office—Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—only one of which was the result of a conspiracy (Lincoln). And another five presidents survived assassination attempts—Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan—all of which were by lone assassins. As was the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, after a campaign rally at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy was murdered by a Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan, who testified in his trial that he killed Kennedy “with 20 years of malice aforethought.”

Thus, it is rational to apply the Conspiracism Principle first: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by randomness or incompetence.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss447_Jay_Bhattacharya_2024_07_13.mp3Download MP3Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. Dr. Bhattacharya’s recent research focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic.

He became famous—or infamous in some circles—for his co-authorship, with Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through widespread infection, “while promoting the fringe notion that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus.” (Wikipedia) In a private email to Anthony Fauci, NIH director Francis Collins called the authors of the declaration “fringe epidemiologists” and said that “(it) seems to be getting a lot of attention — and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.”

That is when he became known as a “fringe epidemiologist”.

In fact, he has published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health among other fields. He holds an MD and a PhD in economics, both earned at Stanford University.

Shermer and Bhattacharya discuss:

• loss of trust in medical and scientific institutions (Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins)
• overall assessment of what went right and wrong with the COVID-19 pandemic
• testing, masking, social isolation
• Is the cure worse than the disease?
• closing of schools, restaurants, salons, parks, beaches, hiking trails, etc.
• the cost to the economy of the shut downs
• the cost to the education of children of the shut downs
• Precautionary Principle
• comparative method: which countries and states did better or worse?
• Lab Leak hypothesis vs. Zoonomic hypothesis
• living with SARS-CoV-2 and its variants
• RFK, Jr. and his conspiracy theories
• debating anti-vaxxers (Rogan and elsewhere)
• treatments: hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, remdesivir, Vitamin D, Paxlovid, Tamiflu, retroviral medicines, monoclonal antibodies
• high risk vs. low risk groups; age, sex, race, pregnancy, weight, preconditions, immune compromised
• myocarditis, Robert Malone, mRNA vaccines, Joe Rogan, RFKJ, Peter Hotez
• The Great Barrington Declaration (“focused protection” of the people most at risk)
• Wall Street Journal OpEd: “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?”, which argued there was little evidence to support shelter-in-place orders and quarantines
• In March 2021, Bhattacharya called the COVID-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” and argued that “The harm to people is catastrophic”. Blacklisted by Twitter.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss446_John_Mackey_2024_07_09.mp3Download MP3Whole Foods Market’s Cofounder and CEO for 44 years, John Mackey offers an intimate and provocative account of the rise of this iconic company and the personal and spiritual journey that inspired its remarkable impact.

The growth of Whole Foods isn’t just a business success story—it’s the story of a retail, cultural, and dietary revolution that has forever changed the industry and the way we eat. After more than four decades at the helm, John Mackey is ready to share never-before-told tales of the people and passions behind the beloved brand.

The Whole Story invites readers on the adventure of building Whole Foods Market: the colorful cast of idealists and foodies who formed the company’s DNA, the many breakthroughs and missteps; the camaraderie and the conflict, and the narrowly avoided disasters. Mackey takes us inside some of the most consequential decisions he had to make and honestly shares his regrets looking back.

For the millions of people who know and love Whole Foods, Mackey’s story is a candid look at the fellowship and meaning born of a shared mission and how an inimitable entrepreneur shepherded a startup hippy food store into the market-leading international brand it is today. John Mackey is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and visionary of Whole Foods Market. In his 44 years of service as CEO, the natural and organic grocer grew from a single store in Austin, Texas, to 540 stores in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, with annual sales exceeding $22 billion. Mackey co-founded the Conscious Capitalism Movement and co-authored a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling book entitled Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business and follow up, Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business. He is also the co-author of The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity and The Whole Foods Cookbook: 120 Delicious and Healthy Plant-Centered Recipes. Mackey currently serves on the board of directors for Conscious Capitalism, The Motley Fool, CATO Institute, The Institute for Cultural Evolution, and Students for Liberty and is pursuing his next business venture, Love.Life.

Shermer and Mackey discuss:

• how lives turn out: genes, environment and luck
• born in 1953: timing of going into the natural and organic foods market in the 1970s
• growing up in the 60s and coming of age in the 70s
• influence of his father, family, friends, mentors, teachers
• Trinity University and UT Austin influences
• Do you have to go to college to be successful?
• what makes an entrepreneur successful
• Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality
• from vegetarian co-op to SaferWay (with Renee Lawson) to Whole Foods Market
• from one store to many stores
• unions, salary caps, CEO/worker ratio, employee-owned businesses, regulators
• food quality regulation: private vs. government
• spiritual journey: from Christianity to New Age mysticism, Eastern wisdom, and life-changing awakenings through psychedelics
• political and intellectual development: from countercultural co-op dweller to libertarian and Conscious Capitalist
• libertarianism as a philosophy
• collective action problems: common good vs. individual liberty
• What’s it like getting your company to an IPO?
• What’s it like doing ultra-marathon hiking for days and weeks at a time?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss445_Aella_2024_07_02.mp3Download MP3Aella is a writer, blogger, data analyst, and sex worker who has written extensively about the psychology and economics of online sex work, conducting extensive surveys and research in order to understand the ecosystem of sex workers. She grew up in Idaho as the oldest of three daughters of conservative parents who were part of a community of fundamentalist Christians, where she was homeschooled; their family name has been withheld in media coverage for privacy reasons. She moved out at age 17 after a fallout with her parents, and in 2012, after quitting a job as an assembly line worker in a factory, began working as a camgirl. She eventually became one of the highest-earning creators on OnlyFans, making over $100,000 in some months. By 2021, she was described as having set herself apart partly by conducting extensive market research, e.g. surveying almost 400 fellow female OnlyFans performers about their incomes and identifying factors that were correlated with higher earnings.

Shermer and Aella discuss:

• Aella’s upbringing in a conservative Christian home-schooled household
• sex work or prostitution?
• her response to Rachel Moral’s Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution
• her response to Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution
• the evolutionary psychology of sex differences
• male-female sexual psychology differences
• why women are choosier and more risk averse
• why men want more sexual variety
• what men and women regret about sex
• sexual jealousy and how the sexes differ
• what it’s like being in an orgy
• how does she determine how much to charge as an escort
• BDSM, fetishes, and sexual violence
• autogynephilia
• trans matters
• Who are the women who sell sex?
• Who are the men who buy sex?
• agency and volition in sex work: women and men
• virtual sex, phone sex, cyber sex, cam sex, etc. (OnlyFans and other sites)
• feminism and sex work
• pornography: good or bad?
• decriminalizing sex work.

Anthropologist Alan Fiske’s Model of Four Types of Human Relationships1. Communal Sharing: Relatives, couples, marriage, families, friends—freely share resources within a group, no tab keeping, egalitarian, “one flesh” common essence, no contamination, evolved: maternal care, kin selection, mutualism 2. Authority Ranking: Employer/Employee, Teacher/Student, Parent/Child—linear hierarchy, dominance, status, age, size, strength, wealth, precedence, tribute from inferiors, obedience, paternalistic, noblesse oblige; evolved: hierarchical primates 3. Equality Matching: Friends splitting gas, informal exchanges. Tit-for-tat reciprocity, division of resources equitably via turn-taking, coin-flipping, matching contributions, cut and divide cake equally; evolve: fairness & reciprocity, intuitive economics, cheating detection, perspective taking & calculation 4. Market Pricing: Economy of strangers, money is the social currency of exchange and reciprocity—currency, prices, rents, salaries, benefits, interest, credit; evolve: none

Violations of Fiske’s 4 Models* Restaurant diner invites owner to dinner instead of paying * Dinner guest offers to pay host * Woody Allen’s watch/my neighbor’s car * Organ sale * Roads: Public vs. Private * Sex between Employer & Employee, Teacher & Student, Parent & Child * Prostitution: Sex is usually within communal sharing or equality matching, not market pricing.

David Buss: When Men Behave BadlyNumber of Sexual Partners Preferred

“Many men are burdened by lust for a variety of different women, constant cravings that cannot ever be fully satisfied … It explains why a handsome movie star such as Hugh Grant would have sex with a prostitute, despite having Elizabeth Hurley, a gorgeous model and actress, as his then steady girlfriend.”

Length of Time Before Engaging in SexEven in the most egalitarian countries, men prefer more sexual partners compared to women. In Norway, researchers asked people how many sex partners they would prefer over the next 30 years. On average, women preferred five, men preferred 25. Even the desire to kiss before intercourse differs between the sexes. About 53 percent of men report that they would have sex without kissing, while only 14.6 percent of women would have sex without kissing.

Choosiness vs. Less DiscerningStudies of online dating, for example, find that most men find most women to be at least somewhat attractive. In contrast, women, on average, view 80 percent of men as below average in attractiveness. Another study found that on the dating app Tinder, men “liked” more than 60 percent of the female profiles they viewed, while women “liked” only 4.5 percent of male profiles.

Sexual RegretsSexual mistakes are viewed differently. Research indicates that when asked to reflect on their sexual history, women are more likely to regret having had sex with someone, while men are more likely to regret having missed out on sexual opportunities.

What Men and Women Look for in a MateFor same-sex friends, men and women prioritized personality and social intelligence. For opposite-sex friends, though, men assigned greater value on attractiveness, whereas women placed greater value on economic resources and physical prowess.

Sexual Harassment PerceptionsWhen men were asked how they would feel if their co-worker of the opposite sex asked them to have sex, 67 percent of men said they would be flattered and only 15 percent said they would be insulted. In contrast, 63 percent of women said they would be insulted and only 17 percent said they would be flattered.

Back-Up Mates and CheatingWhy do people cheat on their romantic partners? For men, it appears that the main reason they stray is the desire for sexual variety. In fact, men who cheat are just as happy in their marriages as men who are faithful. In contrast, women who stray are often unhappy. Women who have affairs often want to detach themselves from relationships in which they are unsatisfied and seek a better partner. In fact, only 30 percent of men report falling in love with their affair partners, while for women it is 79 percent.

From Michael Shermer’s The Moral Arc

Consider the morality of the biblical warlords who had no qualms about taking multiple wives, adultery, keeping concubines, and fathering countless children from their many polygamous arrangements. The anthropologist Laura Betzig has put these stories into an evolutionary context by analyzing the Old Testament. She found no less than 41 named polygamists, not one of which was a powerless man. “In the Old Testament, powerful men—patriarchs, judges, and kings—have sex with more wives; they have more sex with other men’s women; they have sex with more concubines, servants, and slaves; and they father many children.” And not just the big names. According to Betzig’s analysis, “men with bigger herds of sheep and goats tend to have sex with more women, then to father more children.” Most of the polygynous patriarchs, judges, and kings had two, three, or four wives with a corresponding number of children, although King David had more than eight wives and twenty children, King Abijah had 14 wives and 38 children, and King Rehoboam had 18 wives (and 60 other women) who bore him no fewer than 88 offspring. But they were all lightweights compared to King Solomon, who married at least 700 women. There were Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women he married, then for good measure added 300 concubines, which he called “man’s delight.” (What Solomon’s concubines called him was never recorded.)

Carol TavrisFrom a review of Nona Willis Aronowitz’s Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution; Christine Emba’s Rethinking Sex: A Provocation; Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution; Bridget Phetasy’s Substack essay “Beyond Parody”

After devoting many years to the scientific study of women’s heterosexual experiences—through reading, observing, listening, and participating—I have drawn a few conclusions:

1. Many women like sex when it brings erotic pleasure and they like the guy. This is called “good sex.”
2. Many women don’t like sex when the guy is a dork, rude, thoughtless, clumsy, coercive, or violent. This is called “bad sex.”
3. Many women enjoy hookups, short affairs, conference connections, orgies (planned and spontaneous), and adventures with multiples and variations of all kinds. This is called “having fun.”
4. Many #3 women get tired after a few years (“Oh God, Murray, another orgy?”), whereas others make it a way of life. This is called “being in the lifestyle.”
5. Many women prefer sex with one doting partner at a time, the “time” lasting from as long as love does, from a week to a lifetime. This is called “a loving relationship.”

In every era, there are people who devote their energies to telling women they’re doing it all wrong. Are you enjoying monogamy with your sweetheart when others all around you are claiming that it is liberating, feminist, and “sex positive” to have many partners? Are you hopelessly straight or gay, or a hopelessly old-fashioned one-partner-at-a-time person, even though you think that for political, personal, or progressive reasons you really ought to be trying the alternatives? Are you enjoying your many affairs when others all around you are claiming that women aren’t designed for infidelity, that you’re merely capitulating to the Playboy standard, that you’re repressing the trauma of all those impersonal adventures, that you’re just a dupe and victim of hardwired male sexual preferences? Like a call-and-response in music or church, whichever view is ascendant will call for its inevitable antithetical response. Sex writers are always pouncing on a new hook, even when today’s new is yesterday’s old.

Today’s hook is this: if it’s good to be sex-positive, how come so many women are having sex-negative experiences? Why so much unwanted sex, harassments, miserable hookups, drunken episodes? Why the eternal difficulties in communication? Why do many women feel obliged to “consent,” when they’d rather go home and play with the dog? A spate of recent books locates the answers in the failure of feminism and the “unfinished” sexual revolution to make women’s sexual lives a thing of beauty and a joy forever. These include

To her credit, Nona Willis Aronowitz does not write an analysis of women’s continuing search for sexual ecstasy, satisfaction, and thoughtful male partners as if no one had done so before. That would have been a challenge, given that her own mother, the brilliant feminist Ellen Willis, tackled these questions a generation earlier, and her daughter interweaves her mother’s writings and experiences, along with those of other feminists of that era, with her own stories. But whereas her mother’s generation (and mine) emphasized that the personal is political, Willis Aronowitz’s mantra is the political is personal.

Personal? TMI is an understatement. Indeed, readers may forgiven for asking, What bad sex? The book is a litany of the many orgasms she’s had, hours and hours of cunnilingus with this lover and that one, anal oral sideways multiples, the fantastic lovers, the terrible lovers, how she loves dick, experiments with other women, passionate weekends. The “bad sex” of the title is mostly “bad relationships”—hookups with men who were selfish or otherwise unlikeable, or, in the case of the partner she leaves at the outset of her story, relationships that had become sexually boring. Here it all is again, yet another woman trying to find the blissful balance between committed sex and casual sex—open relationships being necessary for anyone who believes that monogamy is death to being a fully sexually liberated person. Calling Dr. Ester Perel and the innumerable marriage counselors who study the shapeshifting patterns of intimacy, passion, and desire over the course of life and love.

As I read this book, I wondered how the same narrative would sound if written by a man:

“I left my otherwise loving partner, whom I loved, because I got bored with her and our sex life, and I didn’t like her off-putting smell that ruined our sexual chemistry. I’m happy to report other intimate details about her that annoyed me, but I won’t bother you with her perspective on me. I will tell you about my many lovers so you will understand how desirable I am, including that amazing afternoon in which I received one blow job after another. I confess that certain body shapes and sizes turn me on. Unfortunately, along with the hot women I couldn’t get enough of, at least until I tired of them, I hooked up with some awful women too—demanding, rude, noncommunicative about their desires, egocentric. Wait: one of those impersonal hookups was a very nice person.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss444_Nathan_Law_2024_06_29.mp3Download MP3Nathan Law is a young Hong Kong activist, currently in exile and based in London. During the Umbrella Movement in 2014, Nathan was one of the five representatives who took part in the dialogue with the government, debating political reform. Upholding non-violent civic actions, Nathan, Joshua Wong and other student leaders founded Demosistō in 2016 and ran for the Legislative Council election. Nathan was elected with 50,818 votes in the Hong Kong Island constituency and became the youngest Legislative Councilor in history. Yet his seat was overturned in July 2017 following Beijing’s constitutional reinterpretation, despite international criticism. Nathan was later jailed for his participation in the Umbrella Movement. The persecution sparked global concern over Beijing’s crackdown on human rights and democratic movement in Hong Kong. In 2018, Nathan and his fellow student activists Joshua Wong and Alex Chow were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by U.S. congressmen and British parliament members. Due to the risk imposed by the draconian National Security Law, Nathan left Hong Kong and continues to speak up for Hong Kong people at the international level. In 2020, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. He is the author of the new book Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back.

Shermer and Law discuss:

• a brief history of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square, the Umbrella Revolution, Sino-British Joint Declaration, the National Security Law, crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces
• his parents and life growing up in Hong Kong
• how Asia’s most liberal, open and cosmopolitan city changed so fundamentally
• how a flourishing and free society was undermined from within
• the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
• Xi Jinping
• What is freedom?
• What are rights?
• How are rights and freedoms won or lost?
• Who owns the truth, and what is truth, anyway?
• Can you reform society from within?
• freedom of speech, the press, to assemble, etc.
• the enemies of dictators
• Why are democracies fragile?

Quotes from the book Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back

“When governments control access to information and are able to define the narrative and dictate what we know, we lose more than our freedoms. We lose the ability to see the world for what it is. We lose our humanity.”

“Freedom is our most fundamental human right. It is universal to us all. If the right to life is our right to exist, our right to be free allows us to live the only life worth living. We all need our own agency, freedom of thought and conscience. Without these we have no dignity.”

“Freedom should be the starting point for our relationships with others. To form and maintain those relationships we often choose to curtail our freedoms. We may relinquish a certain amount of freedom in return for collective benefits—for instance, I’m happy to give up some of my income in taxes so that I don’t have to build my own roads or hospitals. We cede certain rights to government on the condition that it provides us with an environment in which we can live and, hopefully, prosper. This relationship between freedom and obedience is the basis of the social contract.”

“I think freedom is as much a gut feeling as a thought—as much a cause of the heart as of the head. What drives their pursuit of freedom is not only the ideal, but also their revulsion against the opposite—to be unfree. It is their sense of being oppressed, of witnessing or experiencing injustice and unfairness, that is the driver.”

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” —George Orwell

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss443_A.J._Jacobs_2024_06_25.mp3Download MP3A.J. Jacobs learned the hard way that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket will earn you a lot of strange looks. In the wake of several controversial rulings by the Supreme Court and the ongoing debate about how the Constitution should be interpreted, Jacobs set out to understand what it means to live by the Constitution.

In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts—feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations.

The book blends unforgettable adventures—delivering a handwritten petition to Congress, applying for a Letter of Marque to become a legal pirate for the government, and battling redcoats as part of a Revolutionary War reenactment group—with dozens of interviews from constitutional experts from both sides. Jacobs dives deep into originalism and living constitutionalism, the two rival ways of interpreting the document.

Much like he did with the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs provides a crash course on our Constitution as he experiences the benefits and perils of living like it’s the 1790s. He relishes, for instance, the slow thinking of the era, free from social media alerts. But also discovers the progress we’ve made since 1789 when married women couldn’t own property.

Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As politicians and Supreme Court Justices wage a high-stakes battle over how literally we should interpret the Constitution, A.J. Jacobs provides an entertaining yet illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.

A.J. Jacobs is a journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig whose books include Drop Dead Healthy, The Year of Living Biblically, and The Puzzler. A contributor to NPR, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other media outlets, Jacobs lives in New York City with his family. His new book is The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.

Shermer and Jacobs discuss:

• what possessed him to spend a year living constitutionally and biblically
• what the Constitution really says and means
• Constitutional originalism
• what’s behind the Supreme Court’s rulings on guns, religion, women’s rights and more
• what happens if you become an ultimate originalist and follow the Constitution using the mindset and tools of the Founders
• why originalism is not the best approach
• what happened when he carried a musket on the streets of NYC
• why firing an 18th century musket takes 15 steps. It would be hard to conduct a mass shooting with a musket.
• how he gave up social media in favor of writing pamphlets with a quill pen
• how he fined his sons thirty-seven and a half cents for every time they cursed, as was the constitutionally-approved law in New York State in 1789
• 18th century view of rights was very different. (They did not see rights as trump cards. Rights had to be balanced against the common good. So free speech was actually much more constricted. Neither conservatives nor progressives would want the 18th century free speech.)
• what the 18th century was really like: it was a racist, sexist, smelly, dangerous time
• Ideas from the 18th century worth preserving:
  • cold takes instead of hot takes
  • election cakes (elections in the 18th century were festive. (This was a new right. They had music, parades, and cake.)
  • responsibilities and virtue. (They balanced the idea of rights with the idea of virtue and the pubic good.)
  • epistemic humility and changing one’s mind
  • news detoxes (They got their news twice a week. That allowed them time to think about it instead of always being in reactive rage mode).
• what the founders got right and wrong
  • They were elitists, and installed counter-majoritarian measures in the Constitution that are still problems today (like the Electoral College).
  • They would be shocked at today’s government, and how the president is far too powerful.
  • The Founders were fearful of monarchy and authoritarianism. They would not be happy with the office of president today.
  • Why the Founders considered three co-presidents because no single person should have that much power.
  • They would be shocked by how powerful SCOTUS is. Most Founders didn’t think it would be the final say on the Constitution.
  • They would be shocked by the Supermajority rule in the Senate. That is not in the Constitution.
• The Constitution
  • Frederick Douglass’ idea that the Constitution is a promissory note. It contains ideals like liberty and equality. We have to make America live up to it. (MLK and Obama echoed this idea)
  • We should interpret the Constitution in a pluralist way, not a single lens. Look at the original meaning, but also how a decision will affect society today, and our descendants. (Or else as a pair of pants with an elastic waist. You want it to have some structure, but also some give. It shouldn’t be a pair of skinny jeans that splits open when you gain a pound.)
• We have to work to save democracy through reform. It won’t save itself.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss442_Justin_McHenry_2024_06_22.mp3Download MP3Is Lemuria a real place, or the fever dream of crackpots, mystics, conspiracy theorists, and Bigfoot hunters?

Below the waters where the Pacific and Indian Oceans lies a lost continent. One of hopes and dreams that housed a race of beings that arrived from foreign planets and from which sprang humanity, religion, civilization, and our modern world. It was called Lemuria and it was all fake.

What began as a theoretical land bridge to explain the mystery of lemurs on Madagascar quickly got hijacked to become the evolutionary home of humankind, the cradle of spirituality, and then the source of cosmological wonders. Abandoned by science as hokum, Lemuria morphed into a land filled with ancient, advanced civilizations, hollowed-out mountains full of gold and crystals, moon-beings descending in baskets, underground evil creatures, and a breast-feeding Bigfoot.

The history of Lemuria is populated with a dizzying array of people from early Darwinists to conspiracy spouting Congressmen, globetrotting madams, Rosicrucians, Hollow-Earthers, sci-fi writers, UFO contactees, sleeping prophets, New Age channelers, a “Mother God”, and a tequila swigging conspiracy theorist. Historian Justin McHenry provides a thoughtful exploration of how pseudo-science hijacked the gentle Victorian-era concept of Lemuria and, in following decades, twisted it into an all-encompassing home for alternative ideas about race, spirituality, science, politics, and the paranormal.

Justin McHenry is a writer, historian, and archivist. His writing has appeared in magazines such as FATE, newspapers, journals, and various online publications like Belt Mag, 100 Days of Appalachia, and he edited the collection of stories, The Garden at Rose Brake. He received his Master’s degree in History from West Virginia University. His new book is Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place.

Shermer and McHenry discuss:

• how organisms get to islands from mainlands
• rafting sweepstakes vs. land bridges.
• Alfred Russel Wallace and Island biogeography
• how lemurs get to Madagascar
• Zoologist Philip Sclater, 1864, first to propose a sunken continent beneath the Indian Ocean as a land bridge to account for biogeographical facts
• Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation: proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of proto-human missing links: monogenists vs. polygenists
• Haeckle to Hitler
• German romance sturm and drung science of hidden forces: Alexander von Humboldt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• James Churchward, Mu, lost continent in the Pacific Ocean
• Land of Mu and Atlantis
• Lemuria and human origins
• L. Sprague de Camp, Los Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature
• Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis, and the romance of a lost past
• continental drift and plate tectonics and Lemuria
• Lemuria and Theosophy, anthroposophy and other occult beliefs
• Madame Blavatsky theorized that Australia was a remnant inland region of Lemuria that Aboriginal Australians and Aboriginal Tasmanians were of Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin
• Hermes Trismegistus and Hermeticism, Rosicrucians
• romancing the past
• Golden ages
• lost races
• pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology and mythology.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss441_Michelle_Dowd_2024_06_18.mp3Download MP3As a child, Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. She was born into an ultra-religious cult, “The Field,” started in the 1930s by her grandfather, who convinced generations of young male followers that he would live five hundred years and ascend to the heavens when doomsday came. Comfort and care are sins, Michelle is told. As a result, she was forced to learn the skills necessary to battle hunger, thirst, and cold; she learns to trust animals more than humans; and most importantly, she learns how to survive in the natural world.

At “The Field,” a young Michelle lives a life of abuse, poverty, and isolation as she obeys her family’s rigorous religious and patriarchal rules. But as Michelle gets older, she realizes she has the strength to break free. Focus on what will sustain you, she tells herself. Use everything. Waste nothing. Get to know the intricacies of the land, like the intricacies of your body. And so she does.

Using stories of individual edible plants and their uses to anchor each chapter, Forager is both a searing coming-of-age story and a meditation on the ways in which understanding nature can lead to freedom, even joy.

Michelle Dowd is a professor of journalism at Chaffey College and contributor to The New York Times, Alpinist, The Los Angeles Book Review, Catapult, OnlySky, and other national publications. She founded The Chaffey Review, an award-winning literary journal, advises student media, teaches poetry and critical thinking in the California State prisons, and has been recognized as a Longreads Top 5 for The Thing with Feathers, on the relationship between environmentalism and hope. She grew up in a family cult called “The Field,” located in a compound in the Angeles Forest outside of Los Angeles. After escaping the cult she found her way into college, earning a degree from the prestigious liberal-arts Pitzer College, then went on to earn a graduate degree from the University of Boulder. Her memoir is Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss440_Robert_Powell_2024_06_15.mp3Download MP3Robert Powell, a founding Board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, has studied the UFO subject for 17 years. His work is encapsulated in UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know) which provides a scientific rationale for the reality of non-terrestrial craft that are intelligently controlled.

Powell begins his book by familiarizing the reader with the history of UFOs and he identifies the more enigmatic and interesting UFO sightings. He examines the characteristics of these sightings that argue against a prosaic explanation: extreme acceleration, electromagnetic interference, bending light, no obvious propulsion mechanisms, and a lack of interaction with the atmosphere. Powell discusses the recent events that have caused our government to change the term from UFO to UAP. Included is information never before released indicating the government possesses not just two videos but five videos from 2015 of UFOs operating in the vicinity of the USS Roosevelt nuclear aircraft carrier.

Powell also discuss the extraterrestrial hypothesis considering the thousands of exoplanets that have been discovered in the last twenty years. Powell challenges the reader to consider all the implications that must be considered if intelligent life discovers us first. He looks at how we as individuals and as a society react to UFOs. He documents actions taken by our military that include instances when we have fired on UFOs.

Powell argues that it is time for a change in the study of UFOs. The phenomenon has been with us for 75 years and we have learned very little as the decades have passed. The author makes the case for what needs to be done going forward. The solution he proposes will require a paradigm shift in our thinking and his book provides the information needed to understand that paradigm shift.

Robert Powell is a founding Board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU). He was the Director of Research at MUFON from 2007–2017 and created MUFON’s Science Review Board in 2012. Robert is one of two authors of the detailed radar/witness report on the “Stephenville Lights” as well as the SCU report “UAP: 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico”. He is also the primary author on the recently published paper, “A Forensic Analysis of Navy Carrier Strike Group Eleven’s Encounter with an Anomalous Aerial Vehicle” and a secondary author of a paper published in the journal Entropy entitled, “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles.” Robert is a member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, the UFODATA project, and the National Space Society.

Shermer and Powell discuss:

• Separating two questions: Are they out there? Have they come here?
• SETI science vs. UFO/UAP science
• The odds of alien life somewhere in the cosmos
• Will aliens look anything like us? Convergent vs. contingent evolution
• What alien intelligence might be like: biological, digital, or otherwise?
• Bayesian reasoning about UFOs and UAPs
• The quality of evidence in evaluating UFO claims
• The U.S. military UAP videos and what they represent
• The Disclosure Project from the U.S. government about UFOs and UAPs
• An answer to Fermi’s Paradox: where is everyone?
• Projects Sign, Blue Book, Cyclops, Grudge
• AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program)
• Oumuamua and Avi Loeb’s claim that it was a technosignature
• Technosignatures here and there
• Biosignatures here and there
• Directionality and teleology in evolution of life
• Interstellar travel
• Dyson spheres, rings, and swarms
• Why aliens matter.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss439_Neil_Van_Leeuwen_2024_06_11.mp3Download MP3We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs―that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neuroscientist and philosopher Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings that guide make-believe play.

Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief―which he terms religious “credence”―is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance.

It is hardly controversial to suggest that religion has a social function, but Religion as Make-Believe breaks new ground by theorizing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Once we recognize that our minds process factual and religious beliefs in fundamentally different ways, we can gain deeper understanding of the complex individual and group psychology of religious faith.

Neil Van Leeuwen is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at Georgia State University and a recipient of the European Commission’s Marie Curie Fellowship. His research has been featured in The New York Times and The Atlantic and on NPR. His new book is Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination and Group Identity.

Shermer and Van Leeuwen discuss:

• His own personal religious journey (or lack thereof)
• What is “make-believe” and “pretend play”?
• Believe vs. make-believe
• “I think” vs. “I believe”
• Beliefs and imagination: “many religious beliefs are imaginings of the sort that guide make-believe play, though they are imaginings that become central to the religious actor’s identity and guide symbolic actions that express sacred values.”
• Factual belief vs. religious credence
• Four principles of factual belief:
  • If you factually believe it, you can’t help believing it.
  • Factual beliefs guide actin across the bard.
  • Factual beliefs guide inferences in imagination
  • Factual beliefs respond to evidence.
• Tanya Luhrmann’s How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others
• Ben Alderson-Day: Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other
• What does it mean to “take God seriously”?
• General religious credences vs. personal religious credences
• Willing suspension of disbelief
• Group identity
• Sacred values
• The Puzzle of Religious Rationality:
  • Solution 1: Religious belief as delusion
  • Solution 2: People are gullible
  • Solution 3: Religious belief as rational
  • Solution 4: Displaced content (Gould’s NMA)
  • Solution 5: Murky contents (God is 3 persons in 1)
  • Solution 6: No content
  • Solution 7: Belief in belief (Dennett)
  • Solution 8: Weak belief
  • Solution 9: A distinct cognitive attitude
• What is “that still small voice” we all hear in our heads?
• When people say they “hear the voice of God” what does that mean?
• Normal “voices within” vs. hallucinations and psychoses
• Psychiatrist Milton Rokeach’s book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
• Anomalous psychological experiences
• Sleep paralysis and other cognitive anomalies
• Belief in angels and demons
• Sensed presences
• Empirical truths, religious truths, mythic truths
• How people come to religious belief vs. how they leave religion
• Witches and witchcraft.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss438_Marc_Hauser_2024_06_08.mp3Download MP3Each year at least a billion children around the world are victims of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that range from physical abuse and racial discrimination to neglect and food deprivation. The brain plasticity of our most vulnerable makes the adverse effects of trauma only that much more damaging to mental and physical development. Those dealt a hand of ACEs are more likely to drop out of school, have a shorter life, abuse substances, and suffer from myriad mental health and behavioral issues.

The crucial question is: How do we intervene to offer these children a more hopeful future? Neurobiologist and educator Dr. Marc Hauser provides a novel, research-based framework to understand a child’s unique response to ACEs that goes beyond our current understanding and is centered around the five Ts—the timing during development when the trauma began, its type, tenure, toxicity, and how much turbulence it has caused in a child’s life. Using this lens, adults can start to help children build resilience and recover—and even benefit—from their adversity through targeted community and school interventions, emotional regulation tools, as well as a new frontier of therapies focused on direct brain stimulation, including neurofeedback and psychedelics.

While human suffering experienced by children is the most devastating, it also presents the most promise for recovery; the plasticity of young people’s brains makes them vulnerable, but it also makes them apt to take back the joy, wonder, innocence, and curiosity of childhood when given the right support. Vulnerable Minds is a call to action for parents, policymakers, educators, and doctors to reclaim what’s been lost and commit ourselves to our collective responsibility to all children.

Marc Hauser is an educator, neuroscientist, and the founder of Risk Eraser, a program that helps at-risk kids lead healthier lives. He is a former professor of evolutionary biology and psychology at Harvard University and the author of over three hundred papers. His books include Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think, Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong, Evilicious: Cruelty = Desire + Denial, and his new book Vulnerable Minds: The Harm of Childhood Trauma and the Hope of Resilience.

Shermer and Hauser discuss:

• Hauser’s personal adversities, from childhood bullying to academic misconduct at Harvard
• LJ: LeBron James story from childhood trauma to NBA triumph
• WHO: a billion children annually suffer from ACEs
• Types of adversity: physical and sexual abuse, racial and sexual discrimination, emotional and physical deprivation, domestic violence, disease, neglect, cruelty, torture, war
• ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences
• DSM-5: limited prosocial emotions/callous-unemotional: a highly heritable trait
• Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism: the Dark Triad
• Attachment Theory: John Bolby
• Disorganized Attachment: when attachment is broken: hyperactive amygdala: reach puberty at an earlier age, have heightened sexual activity, less investment in offspring (even 3 generations later)
• Borderline Personality Disorder: (1) a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and (2) marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.
• Sexual abuse and eating disorders
• Consequences: substance abuse, suicide, obesity, depression, liver disease, school dropout, lower life expectancy
• Do different types of ACEs result in different consequences?
• Why some people meet traumatic experiences with resilience while others don’t?
• Timing, duration, severity, and predictability of ACEs.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss437_Einat_Wilf_2024_06_04.mp3Download MP3Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading intellectual and original thinker on matters of foreign policy, economics, education, Israel, and the Jewish people. She was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties. Dr. Wilf has a BA in Government and Fine Arts from Harvard University, an MBA from INSEAD in France (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires), and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. Born and raised in Israel, Dr. Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces. Dr. Wilf is also the author of six books including: My Israel, Our Generation, Back to Basics: How to Save Israeli Education (At No Additional Cost), It’s NOT the Electoral System, Stupid, Winning the War of Words, Telling Our Story (a collection of Wilf’s essays on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace,) and The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace.

Shermer and Wilf discuss:

• Why Israel? Why the Jews? Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
• Karim Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused Israeli and Hamas leaders of war crimes and called for a cease-fire by Israel in Gaza, particularly in Rafah
• Accusations of genocide, induced famine, and war crimes against Netanyahu
• Ireland, Spain and Norway say they will recognize a Palestinian state
• After 7 months of fighting, why has the IDF been unable to defeat Hamas?
• AP story outlining 4 options for Gaza:
  • Full scale military occupation
  • Lighter occupation with Palestinian administrators
  • Grand bargain: Reformed Palestinian Authority would govern Gaza with assistance of Arab and Muslim nations including Saudi Arabia that would normalize relations with Israel in return for a U.S. defense pact.
  • A deal with Hamas: release all of the hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including senior militants, as well as withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, a cease-fire, and reconstruction, leaving Hamas in control of Gaza.
• American student protests against Israel and for Palestine (and even Hamas!)
• Israel: what happened to their vaunted security apparatus, intelligence agency and military readiness?
• Zionism, Judaism, and Israel
• Palestine, Palestinians, and the Gaza strip
• Hamas, Hezbollah, and terrorism in the Middle East
• Progressive Left failure to denounce Hamas terrorists
• Why students & student groups are pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel
• The rise of anti-Semitism in recent years
• Proximate causes of anti-Semitism
• Ultimate causes of anti-Semitism
• The Abraham Accords
• The Two-State Solution.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss436_George_Takach_2024_06_01.mp3Download MP3So much of what we hear about China and Russia today likens the relationship between these two autocracies and the West to a “rivalry” or a “great-power competition.” Some might consider it alarmist to say we are in the midst of a second Cold War, but that may be the only responsible way to describe today’s state of affairs.

What’s more, we have come a long way from Mao Zedong’s infamous observation that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Now we live in an age more aptly described by Vladimir Putin’s cryptic prophecy that “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.”

George S. Takach’s incisive and meticulously researched new volume, Cold War 2.0, is the book we need to thoroughly understand these frightening and perilous times. In the geopolitical sphere, there are no more pressing issues than the appalling mechanizations of a surveillance state in China, Russia’s brazen attempt to assert its autocratic model in Ukraine, and China’s increasingly likely plans to do the same in Taiwan.

But the key here, Takach argues, is that our new Cold War is not only ideological but technological: the side that prevails in Cold War 2.0 will be the one that bests the other in mastering the greatest innovations of our time. Artificial intelligence sits in our pockets every day—but what about AI that coordinates military operations and missile defense systems? Or the highly sophisticated semiconductor chips and quantum computers that power those missiles and a host of other weapons? And, where recently we have seen remarkable feats of bio-engineering to produce vaccines at record speed, shouldn’t we be concerned how catastrophic it would be if bio-engineering were co-opted for nefarious purposes?

Takach thoroughly examines how each of these innovations will shape the tension between democracy and autocracy, and how each will play a central role in this second Cold War. Finally, he crafts a precise blueprint for how Western democracies should handle these innovations to respond to the looming threat of autocracy—and ultimately prevail over it.

George S. Takach holds a bachelor’s degree in history, political economy, and philosophy from the University of Toronto; a graduate degree from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University; and a law degree from the University of Toronto. For forty years, he practiced technology law at McCarthy Tétrault, Canada’s premier law firm. He has written three books on technology law/tech commercial subjects. Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America is his first book for a general audience. He lives in Toronto.

Shermer and Takach discuss:

• Mao Zedong, 1927: “Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
• Vladimir Putin: “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.”
• What is AI and what will it be able to do in the coming decades?
• China’s surveillance state
• Russia and Ukraine
• Cold War 1.0: Autocracy, Democracy and Technology
• Cold War 2.0: AI and Autocracy and Democracy
• semiconductor chip supremacy
• quantum computing
• biotechnology
• China and Taiwan
• How China’s invasion of Taiwan is likely to unfold, and what the U.S. can do about it.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss435_Charan_Ranganath_2024_05_28.mp3Download MP3A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.

Memory, Dr. Ranganath shows, is a highly transformative force that shapes how we experience the world in often invisible and sometimes destructive ways. Knowing this can help us with daily remembering tasks, like finding our keys, and with the challenge of memory loss as we age. What’s more, when we work with the brain’s ability to learn and reinterpret past events, we can heal trauma, shed our biases, learn faster, and grow in self-awareness.

Including fascinating studies and examples from pop culture, and drawing on Ranganath’s life as a scientist, father, and child of immigrants, Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power—and its quirks—we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future.

Charan Ranganath is a Professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California. Outside of neuroscience, Dr. Ranganath is also a songwriter and guitarist with a number of recording credits, including a song on a feature film soundtrack.

Shermer and Ranganath discuss:

• the neurophysiology of memory: how memories are stored by neurons
• the meaning of “forgetting” — Is the memory in there somewhere or lost forever?
• How much of what we could remember do we actually remember?
• episodic, semantic, working, flashbulb, long-term, and short-term memory
• recovered memories vs. false memories + confabulation, conflation
• regular memory loss and disease/injury memory loss
• Alzheimer’s, dementia, senility
• PTSD and bad memories
• déjá vu
• triggers of memory: music, smells, contextual cues
• learning as a form of memory
• learning by making mistakes
• social memories and the extended self
• remembered self vs. experiencing self
• MEMself vs. POVself
• uploading memories into the cloud
• improving your memory: what works, what doesn’t.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss434_Tricia_Rose_2024_05_25.mp3Download MP3In recent years, condemnations of racism in America have echoed from the streets to corporate boardrooms. At the same time, politicians and commentators fiercely debate racism’s very existence. And so, our conversations about racial inequalities remain muddled. In Metaracism, Brown University Professor of Africana Studies Tricia Rose cuts through the noise with a bracing and invaluable new account of what systemic racism actually is, how it works, and how we can fight back. She reveals how—from housing to education to criminal justice—an array of policies and practices connect and interact to produce an even more devastating “metaracism” far worse than the sum of its parts. While these systemic connections can be difficult to see—and are often portrayed as “color-blind”—again and again they function to disproportionately contain, exploit, and punish Black people. By helping us to comprehend systemic racism’s inner workings and destructive impact, Rose shows how to create a more just America for us all.

Tricia Rose is Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies and the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She has received fellowships from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and her research has been funded by the Mellon and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. She co-hosts with Cornel West the podcast The Tight Rope. She is the author of Longing to Tell: Black Women’s Stories of Sexuality and Intimacy, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When we Talk About Hip Hop—and Why it Matters, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, and her new book Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives—and How We Break Free.

Shermer and Rose discuss:

• how she broke free from her own working-class background growing up in Harlem in the 1960s
• racism, structural racism, systemic racism, metaracism
• specific problems to be solved vs. deep-root cause-ism
• What policies, practices, laws, and beliefs are racist in 2024 America and what can be done about them?
• what it means to be “caught up in the system”
• individual vs. group differences
• White advantages and Black disadvantages
• Rawls’ original position/veil of ignorance and why it has not been realized in America
• race differences that are real and current, and not just historical
• Trayvon Martin
• Kelley Williams-Bolar
• Michael Brown
• Rose’s response to Black conservative authors like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell
• why Coleman Hughes is wrong about color-blindness
• Obama, George Floyd and race relations today
• reparations.

Introduction to the ShowIn my 1997 book Why People Believe Weird Things, in a chapter on race and racism, I summarized the scientific research to date on the subject. My deeper motive in this exercise was my belief that in my lifetime we could achieve—or at least approach in an asymptotic curve—a post-race society in which such superficial characteristics as skin color, hair color and form, and facial traits would be considered the least important thing to know about a person.

Nearly twenty years later, in my book The Moral Arc, I suggested that we had made so much moral progress toward this end that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was at last coming true and so, I concluded, “we are living in the most moral period in our species’ history.”

How naïve I was. Conversations about and coverage of race and race-related incidents have since become omnipresent in our culture, from social media to mainstream media. Government, corporate, and academic collection of data on all matters race has become ubiquitous, driven further along by racial (and gender) sensitivity training programs, of which I have partaken.

Thus, in 2022 I edited a special edition of Skeptic on “Race Matters,” that included: “Systemic Racism—Explained” by Mahzarin R. Banaji, Susan T. Fiske & Douglas S. Massey. Excerpt:

In the early 1960s, more than 60 percent of White Americans agreed that Whites have a right to keep Blacks out of their neighborhoods. By the 1980s, however, the percentage had dropped to 13 percent. The fact that discrimination is illegal, and White support for segregation has plummeted, begs the question of why segregation persists.

Rental and sales agents today are less likely to respond to emails from people with stereotypically Black names or to reply to phone messages left by speakers who “sound Black”. A recent meta-analysis of 16 experimental housing audit studies and 19 lending analyses conducted since 1970 revealed that sharp racial differentials in the number of units recommended by realtors and inspected by clients have persisted and that racial gaps in loan denial rates and borrowing cost have barely changed in 40 years.

Audit studies, conducted across the social and behavioral sciences, include a subset of resume studies in which researchers send the same resume out to apply for jobs, but change just one item: the candidate’s name is Lisa Smith or Lakisha Smith. Then, they wait to see who gets the callback. The bias is clear: employers avoid “Black-sounding” names. In fact, in both Milwaukee’s and New York City’s low-wage job market, Black applicants with no criminal background were called back with the same frequency or less as White applicants just released from prison.

As a result, Critical Race Theory (CRT) literature on systemic racism is both riding and fueling this cultural pattern, loaded as it is with discussions about racial group differences on everything from income and family wealth to the percentage of Black professors in STEM fields. What percentage of STEM professors have brown eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes, and green eyes (pace Jane Elliott’s famous experiment)? How many brunettes, blonds, and redheaded professors are there in STEM?

Who knows? Who cares? Why are these superficial characteristics considered meaningless, whereas equally frivolous features like skin color, hair color and form, and facial traits are proxies for everything from intelligence and personality to moral worth and social value?

The answer is obvious. Race and racism as manifested in slavery, segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow, redlining, profiling, and police brutality is America’s original sin, whereas we have no history of prejudice and bigotry based on eye or hair color. How did we get to this point and how can we get past it?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss433_Bradley_Campbell_2024_05_21.mp3Download MP3Those who are pursuing social justice too often fail to incorporate the insights of sociology, and when they do make use of sociology, they often draw heavily from claims that are highly contested, unsupported by the evidence, or outright false. This book shows why learning to think sociologically can help us to think better about social justice, pointing us toward possibilities for social change while also calling attention to our limits; providing us with hope, but also making us cautious. Offering a series of tips for thinking better about social justice, with each chapter giving examples of bad sociological thinking and making the case for drawing from a broader range of sociological theory and research to inform social justice efforts, it advocates an approach rooted in intellectual and moral humility, grounded in the normative principles of classical liberalism. A fresh approach to social justice that argues for the importance of sociological understanding of the world in our efforts to change it, How to Think Better About Social Justice will appeal to scholars and students of sociology with interests in social justice issues and the sociology of morality, as well as those working to bring about social change.

Bradley Campbell is a professor of sociology at California State University, Los Angeles. His work examines moral conflict, including violent conflicts such as genocide as well as nonviolent conflicts on college campuses over politics and free speech. He is the author of The Geometry of Genocide: A Study in Pure Sociology and co-author of The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars. He has also co-authored op-ed articles about contemporary moral conflicts that have appeared in Time, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times.

Shermer and Campbell discuss:

• What is sociology?
• Telos of sociology: truth or activism?
• Facts and Values
• Utopia, Dystopia, Protopia
• Liberalism vs. illiberalism vs. Conservatism vs. Populism
• Pluralism
• Science and Ideology
• Classical Liberalism: Francis Fukyuama: “a range of political views that nonetheless agree on the foundational importance of equal individual rights, law, and freedom.”
• Social justice scholars argue classical liberalism only favors the dominant group.
• Right: liberalism “generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation, and undermines freedom.” (Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed)
• Right: liberalism has to do with self-governance, discipline, cultivation of virtue.
• Durkheim: individuals as social creatures, so rejects the social contract
• Thomas Sowell’s constrained vs. unconstrained visions of politics
• Can we make people better? Can we incentivize good behavior (rational choice theory)
• Evaluating ideologies
• Victimhood culture vs. honor culture
• Conflicting rights and social tradeoffs
• Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory
• What is multi-culturalism?
• What is identity and identity politics?
• Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
• identity politics
• What is progressive?
• What are the true motives of woke progressive leftists?
• How widespread is the problem of woke ideology?
• Equality vs. Equity
• cancel culture
• Overt racism vs. systemic racism
• Why do Blacks make less money, own fewer and lower quality homes, work in less prestigious jobs, hold fewer seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, run fewer Fortune 500 companies, etc.?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss432_Sean_Carroll_2024_05_18.mp3Download MP3Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way.

Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields. You will finally understand why matter is solid, why there is antimatter, where the sizes of atoms come from, and why the predictions of quantum field theory are so spectacularly successful. Fundamental ideas like spin, symmetry, Feynman diagrams, and the Higgs mechanism are explained for real, not just through amusing stories. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, and all the intuitive notions that have guided homo sapiens for millennia, this book is a journey to a once unimaginable truth about what our universe is.

Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of From Eternity to Here, The Particle at the End of the Universe, The Big Picture, and Something Deeply Hidden. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of London, and many others. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette. His new book series, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, includes one volume on Space, Time, and Motion, and this new volume on Quanta and Fields.

Shermer and Carroll discuss:

• the measurement problem in physics
• wave functions
• entanglement
• fields
• interactions
• scale
• symmetry
• gauge theory
• phases
• matter
• atoms
• What is time?
• Is math all there is? Is math universal?
• double-slit experiment
• superposition
• metaphors in science
• limitations of models and theories of reality
• What banged the Big Bang?
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Second Laws of Thermodynamics and directionality in nature
• Is there a place for God in scientific epistemology?
• many interpretations of quantum mechanics
• multiple dimensions and the multiverse
• string theory and the multiverse
• known unknowables: Are there things we can never know, even in principle?
  • God
  • hard problem of consciousness
  • free will/determinism.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss431_Nellie_Bowles_2024_05_14.mp3Download MP3As a Hillary voter, a New York Times reporter, and frequent attendee at her local gay bars, Nellie Bowles fit right in with her San Francisco neighbors and friends—until she started questioning whether the progressive movement she knew and loved was actually helping people. When her colleagues suggested that asking such questions meant she was “on the wrong side of history,” Bowles did what any reporter worth her salt would do: she started investigating for herself. The answers she found were stranger—and funnier—than she expected.

In Morning After the Revolution, Bowles gives readers a front-row seat to the absurd drama of a political movement gone mad. With irreverent accounts of attending a multiday course on “The Toxic Trends of Whiteness,” following the social justice activists who run “Abolitionist Entertainment LLC,” and trying to please the New York Times’s “disinformation czar,” she deftly exposes the more comic excesses of a movement that went from a sideshow to the very center of American life.

Deliciously funny and painfully insightful, Morning After the Revolution is a moment of collective psychosis preserved in amber. This is an unmissable debut by one of America’s sharpest journalists.

Nellie Bowles is a writer living in Los Angeles. Previously, she was a correspondent at The New York Times where, as part of a team, she won the Gerald Loeb Award in Investigations and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award. Now she is working with her wife, Bari Weiss, to build The Free Press, a new media company, where she also writes the weekly TGIF column which is released every Friday, thank God…or whoever.

Shermer and Bowles discuss:

• what it’s like to work at The New York Times
• what it’s like to found a new media company
• same-sex marriage
• Liberalism vs. Progressivism: The New Progressives
• Black Lives Matter movement
• Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder, “trained Marxist” bought four homes
• Whiteness, White privilege, Robin DiAngelo
• Black bodies, White bodies, somatic abolitionism, bodies of culture

• metoo movement

• LGBTQ
• IDAHOBIT: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia, Transphobia
• BBIPOC: Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color
• Trans movement as the next rights revolution after gay rights?
• Wi Spa
• born in the wrong body?
• CHAZ: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Seattle
• Homelessness
• Anti-Racism led by middle-aged White women
• cancel culture
• defund/abolish the police
• protesting
• Latino, Latina, Latinx.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss430_Christof_Koch_2024_05_11.mp3Download MP3In Then I Am Myself the World, Christof Koch explores the only thing we directly experience: consciousness. At the book’s heart is integrated-information theory, the idea that the essence of consciousness is the ability to exert causal power over itself, to be an agent of change. Koch investigates the physical origins of consciousness in the brain and how this knowledge can be used to measure consciousness in natural and artificial systems.

Enabled by such tools, Koch reveals when and where consciousness exists, and uses that knowledge to confront major social and scientific questions: When does a fetus first become self-aware? Can psychedelic and mystical experiences transform lives? What happens to consciousness in near-death experiences? Why will generative AI ultimately be able to do the very thing we can do, yet never feel any of it? And do our experiences reveal a single, objective reality?   

Christof Koch is a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute and at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, the former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and a former professor at the California Institute of Technology. Author of four previous titles — The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can’t Be Computed, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, and The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach — Koch writes regularly for a range of media, including Scientific American. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Shermer and Koch discuss:

• why “subjective experience,” aka consciousness, fits so uneasily into our physicalist worldview which has been so successful at describing the world around us
• the author’s near-death experience and how this has changed him
• the difficulties of materialism/physicalism in dealing with both the fundamental nature of reality at the quantum level and with consciousness
• the need for a fundamental theory of consciousness that explains our subjective experiences in terms of objective measures
• what we have learned about the brain basis of consciousness in the past several decades
• designing a “consciousness detector” for behavioral unresponsive patients (such as Terry Schiavo) in ICU and rehabilitation homes
• why psychedelics, such as magic mushrooms and Ayahuasca, are of so fascinating to both neuroscientists and to everyone seeking to explore the nature of reality
• both philosophy as well as neuroscience agree that our experience of the world is a construct of our mind, including such fundamental aspects as space and time
• Our minds are shaped by our beliefs, prior experiences, and intentions. We are, to a remarkable extent, the author of our own narrative and can shape perceived reality. This insight is crucial to those of us that suffer from anxiety, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress, and depression.
• the limits of consciousness — birth and death
• the future of advanced brain-machine interfaces
• why digital computers will soon be able to do anything humans can do — but faster and better — but will never be what humans are: conscious.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss429_Tom_Chivers_2024_05_07.mp3Download MP3At its simplest, Bayes’s theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. But in Everything Is Predictable, Tom Chivers lays out how it affects every aspect of our lives. He explains why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives and how a failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. A cornerstone of rational thought, many argue that Bayes’s theorem is a description of almost everything.

But who was the man who lent his name to this theorem? How did an 18th-century Presbyterian minister and amateur mathematician uncover a theorem that would affect fields as diverse as medicine, law, and artificial intelligence? Fusing biography and intellectual history, Everything Is Predictable is an entertaining tour of Bayes’s theorem and its impact on modern life, showing how a single compelling idea can have far reaching consequences.

Tom Chivers is an author and the award-winning science writer for Semafor. Previously he was the science editor at UnHerd.com and BuzzFeed UK. His writing has appeared in The Times (London), The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, CNN, and more. He was awarded the Royal Statistical Society’s “Statistical Excellence in Journalism” awards in 2018 and 2020, and was declared the science writer of the year by the Association of British Science Writers in 2021. His books include The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity’s Future, and How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Stats in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them). His new book is Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World.

Shermer and Chivers discuss:

• Who was Thomas Bayes, what was his equation, and what problem did it solve?
• Bayesian decision theory vs. statistical decision theory
• Popperian falsification vs. Bayesian estimation
• Sagan’s ECREE principle
• Bayesian epistemology and family resemblance
• Paradox of the heap
• Bayesian brain
• Reality as controlled hallucination
• Bayesian prediction errors and why we can’t tickle ourselves
• Bayes and human irrationality
• Superforecasting
• Types of truth
• Mystical experiences and religious truths
• Replication Crisis in science
• Statistical Detection Theory and Signal Detection Theory
• Medical diagnosis problem and why most people get it wrong.

Show NotesMedical Diagnosis Problem and Why Most People Get It Wrong

You go to the doctor not feeling well and they run some diagnostic tests, which indicate that you might have cancer. They tell you that this disease happens to 1 out of 100 people, or a 1% prevalence rate. The test sensitivity for this type of cancer is 90%, that is, the test will be right 90% of the time. The false positive rate of the test is 9%, that is, the test will be wrong 9% of the time. What is the percent likelihood that you have cancer?

When people are presented with this problem, the most common answer given is between 80% and 90%. The correct answer is 9%. This problem is so counterintuitive that not only do most people get it wrong, most medical professionals get it wrong. Think about that: a physician whom you trust runs some diagnostic tests and informs you that you have a 90% chance of having cancer when, in fact, it’s only 9%. That is a huge difference determining what decision you should make about treatment or not. What has gone wrong here? Let’s reframe the problem on a group of people tested for cancer and see how that cashes out on the diagnosis problem:

• In a sample size of 1,000 people, 10 have cancer (the base rate of 1%).
• Of these 10 people, 9 will test positive (the 90% sensitivity of the test).
• Of the 990 people without cancer, 89 will test positive (the 9% false-positive rate).
• A person tests positive. Does this person have cancer or not?

Here is how we compute the answer:

• Out of 1,000 people tested for cancer
• 98 of them test positive in all (9 + 89)
• 9 of them have cancer
• 9 divided by 98 = 0.091 or ~ 9%

Why do most people get such problems wrong in the original framing? The answer is threefold: (1) base rate neglect, that is, the rate of the phenomenon happening is ignored or discounted, in this case a low 1% base rate means the cancer is rare (in Bayesian language, the prior probability was low); (2) probabilities are counterintuitive, that is, they apply to populations of people, not to one person; (3) cognitive heuristics, that is, we’re not naturally Bayesian in our reasoning and instead we use cognitive shortcuts or rules of thumb. The Linda problem:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Pinker on Blindness to Base Rates

Why can’t we predict who will attempt suicide? Why don’t we have an early-warning system for school shooters? Why can’t we profile terrorists or rampage shooters and detain them preventively? The answer comes out of Bayes’s rule: a less-than-perfect test for a rare trait will mainly turn out false positives. The heart of the problem is that only a tiny proportion of the population are thieves, suicides, terrorists, or rampage shooters (the base rate). Until the day that social scientists can predict misbehavior as accurately as astronomers predict eclipses, their best tests would mostly finger the innocent and harmless.

Bayesian Reasoning About UFOsLeslie Kean’s 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, in which the UFOlogist admitted that “roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained” as:

…weather balloons, flares, sky lanterns, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting the sun, planes reflecting the sun, blimps, helicopters, the planets Venus or Mars, meteors or meteorites, space junk, satellites, swamp gas, spinning eddies, sundogs, ball lightning, ice crystals, reflected light off clouds, lights on the ground or lights reflected on a cockpit window, temperature inversions, hole-punch clouds, and the list goes on.

How The Light Gets InAt the 2023 HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London (sponsored by IAI, the Institute of Art and Ideas), during a panel discussion on the role of spiritual experience in our lives, in which I shared the stage with psychologist John Vervaeke and philosopher Sophie-Grace Chappell. Both quoted the noted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein at length, while I quoted Douglas Adams:

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

IAI News editor Ricky Williamson nevertheless makes my point:

This final argument from Shermer is a typical anti-spiritual retort. “Show us the evidence.” Well Michael, here it is: The mystical experience. The mystical experience, much like any other type of experience, offers clear evidence of spiritual reality. But what is the mystical experience?

The mystical experience is evidence of spiritual reality. Philosophical arguments for spirituality, or even for God, are of far less value in my estimation when compared to the empirical evidence of the mystical experience. Spiritual reality can be well-hidden when in a “normal” frame of mind, not much about regular reality hints at the presence of this possible, radical other, but when you see it, when you have a mystical experience, the experience is undeniable.

Feynman

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Hume’s Maxim

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.” When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss428_Lisa_Kaltenegger_2024_05_04.mp3Download MP3For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we’re alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. But once you look for life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. How do you find it over cosmic distances? What actually is life?

As founding director of Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute, astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger has built a team of tenacious scientists from many disciplines to create a specialized toolkit to find life on faraway worlds. In Alien Earths, she demonstrates how we can use our homeworld as a Rosetta Stone, creatively analyzing Earth’s history and its astonishing biosphere to inform this search. With infectious enthusiasm, she takes us on an eye-opening journey to the most unusual exoplanets that have shaken our worldview – planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, and others with more than one sun in their sky! And the best contenders for Alien Earths. We also see the imagined worlds of science fiction and how close they come to reality.

With the James Webb Space Telescope and Dr. Kaltenegger’s pioneering work, she shows that we live in an incredible new epoch of exploration. As our witty and knowledgeable tour guide, Dr. Kaltenegger shows how we discover not merely new continents, like the explorers of old, but whole new worlds circling other stars and how we could spot life there. Worlds from where aliens may even be gazing back at us. What if we’re not alone?

Lisa Kaltenegger is the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell and Associate Professor in Astronomy. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modeling potential habitable worlds and their detectable spectral fingerprint. Kaltenegger serves on the National Science Foundation’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), and on NASA senior review of operating missions. She is a Science Team Member of NASA’s TESS Mission as well as the NIRISS instrument on James Webb Space Telescope. Kaltenegger was named one of America’s Young Innovators by Smithsonian magazine, an Innovator to Watch by Time magazine. She appears in the IMAX 3D movie “The Search for Life in Space” and speaks frequently, including at Aspen Ideas Festival, TED Youth, World Science Festival and the Kavli Foundation lecture at the Adler Planetarium.

Shermer and Kaltenegger discuss:

• Carl Sagan and his influence
• Sagan’s Dragon
• ECREE Principle
• How stars, planets and solar systems form
• How exoplanets are discovered
• Hubble Space Telescope, Kepler Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope
• What is life?
• The Origin of Life
• Fermi’s Paradox: where is everybody (the Great Silence, the Great Filter)
• SETI
• Biosignatures here and there
• Technosignatures here and there
• Dyson spheres and other technosignatures
• Will aliens be biological or AI?
• Interstellar travel
• Kardashev scale of civilizations
• Communicating with aliens: Arrival
• Aliens communicating with us: Contact
• Order of the Dolphin: how to talk to aliens when we can’t even talk to dolphins
• Deities for Atheists, Skygods for Skeptics: aliens as gods and the search as religion
• Why alien worlds matter.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss427_Bruce_Hood_2024_04_30.mp3Download MP3We all want to be happier, but our brains often get in the way. When we’re too stuck in our heads we obsess over our inadequacies, compare ourselves with others and fail to see the good in our lives. In The Science of Happiness, world-leading psychologist and happiness expert Bruce Hood demonstrates that the key to happiness is not self-care but connection. He presents seven simple but life-changing lessons to break negative thought patterns and re-connect with the things that really matter.

• Alter Your Ego
• Avoid Isolation
• Reject Negative Comparisons
• Become More Optimistic
• Control Your Attention
• Connect With Others
• Get Out of Your Own Head

Grounded in decades of studies in neuroscience and developmental psychology, this book tells a radical new story about the roots of wellbeing and the obstacles that lie in our path. With clear, practical takeaways throughout, Professor Hood demonstrates how we can all harness the findings of this science to re-wire our thinking and transform our lives.

Dr. Bruce Hood is an award-winning Professor of Developmental Psychology at Bristol University and the author of several books including SuperSense, The Self Illusion, The Domesticated Brain, and Possessed. His course, The Science of Happiness, is the most popular course at Bristol University. He has appeared extensively on TV and radio, including co-hosting the BBC podcast The Happiness Half Hour in 2021. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the British Psychological Society.

Shermer and Hood discuss:

• Psychedelic drug taking of his youth
• An operational definition of the “good life” or “happiness” or “well being”
• Emotions and happiness
• What are emotions and how can they be measured?
• Love, Hate, Anger, Fear, Disgust, Pleasure/Pain
• Hunger, Thirst, Lust, Attraction, Desires, Passions
• Emotions in the EEA—Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness—what are they “for”?
• Are there universal human emotions?
• The nature and nurture of emotions
• Happiness as an emotion and a social contagion
• eudaimonia (the pursuit of meaning) versus hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure)
• Genetics and heritability of happiness
• Cultural components of happiness (individual vs. collective)
• WEIRD people and happiness
• The Big Five (OCEAN) and happiness
• Marriage and happiness (mate selection)
• Health and happiness
• Walking, exercise, stress reduction and happiness
• Religion, happiness, and the good life
• Variety (as the “spice of life”), stability, and happiness (sexual variety?)
• How to live the life you want—not necessarily the life expected of you
• What the ancient Greeks got right about living the good life
• How failure may actually be a key to more happiness.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss426_Robin_Reames_2024_04_27.mp3Download MP3The discipline of rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded.

In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today’s polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pulling back the curtain on how politicians, journalists, and “journalists” convince us to believe what we believe—and to talk, vote, and act accordingly. Understanding these techniques helps us avoid being manipulated by authority figures who don’t have our best interests at heart. It also grants us rare insight into the values that shape our own beliefs. Learning rhetoric, Reames argues, doesn’t teach us what to think but how to think—allowing us to understand our own and others’ ideological commitments in a completely new way.  Thoughtful, nuanced, and leavened with dry humor, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself offers an antidote to our polarized, post-truth world. 

Robin Reames is associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in rhetorical theory and the history of ideas. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary and ancient rhetorical theory, language theory, rhetorical criticism, political rhetoric, writing, as well as courses in literature and literary theory. Her research is guided by an interest in the visceral and primordial power of human speech, for which ancient rhetoric serves as a first theory. Her book, Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory examines how Plato used rhetorical theory to forge the primordial distinction between seeming and being—the foundational fissure from which Western metaphysics emerged, and the very grounds of the opposition between true and false. Her new book is The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times.

Reames and Shermer discuss:

• What is rhetoric?
• How has rhetoric changed her life?
• Rhetoric vs. facts (rhetorical truths vs. empirical truths)
• Is the point of reason to understand reality or to persuade? (Hugo Mercier/Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason)
• Canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery
• “Through thinking rhetorically about our ideological commitments it is possible for people from radically different orientations to have different, better, and more productive conversation.”
• Logos (authority), pathos (feelings), ethos (ethics), hubris (pride)
• Bullshitters vs. liars
• What is reason?
• Induction and deduction
• What is truth?
• Can you reason people out of beliefs they didn’t reason themselves into?
• Thinking rhetorically rather than ideologically
• Thinking metaphorically: “war on poverty”, “government as family” (George Lakoff)
• Thought and language
• Thought, language, and ideology
• How language is processed (thoughts vs. pictures)
• How to disagree with people/debate hot issues (guns, abortion, immigration)
• Culture wars: war between two different cultures—liberal and conservative
• How to have impossible conversations
• Toulmin scheme: data, claim, warrant, backing, qualifier, rebuttal
• Facts and values
• Value hierarchy
• Warrant: linking data to a claim
• Syllogistic reasoning/deduction
• Conspiracy theories and why people believe them
• Birtherism and Trutherism.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss425_Adam_Gopnik_2024_04_23.mp3Download MP3We push ourselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement.

Achievement is the completion of the task imposed from outside.

Accomplishment, by contrast, is the end point of an engulfing activity one engages in for its own sake.

Shermer and Gopnik discuss:

• mastering the secrets of stage magic (Gopnik’s son worked with David Blaine and Jamy Ian Swiss)
• accomplishment in music
• family and mentors
• the concept of the 10,000-hour rule vs. natural talent
• Adam’s new book All That Happiness Is, which offers timeless wisdom against the grain.

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1986. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon and The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss424_Annie_Jacobsen_2024_04_20.mp3Download MP3Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journals, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and New York Times bestselling author. Her books include: Area 51, Operation Paperclip, The Pentagon’s Brain, Phenomena, First Platoon, and Surprise, Kill, Vanish. Her book Nuclear War: A Scenario, has been optioned to be made into a dramatic film.

Shermer and Jacobsen discuss:

• So much has been written on this subject…what is new? (Richard Rhodes’s nuclear tetraology (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun, Arsenals of Folly, Twilight of the Bombs, Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control, Fred Kaplan’s The Bomb, Martin Sherwin’s Gambling with Armageddon, Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, Carl Sagan’s and Richard Turco’s A Path Where No Man Thought)
• How much more is classified that we still do not know?
• Why we have a nuclear triad (land missiles, submarine missiles, bombers)
• Competition among military forces and increasing budgets for more weapons
• How many types of nuclear weapons are there now, and how many total?
• Why humans engage in aggression, violence and war
• The Prisoner’s dilemma, Hobbesian trap, Security Dilemma, the “other guy” problem
• Balance of Terror, Mutual Assured Destruction, Logic of Deterrence
• Close calls: Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear sub/Vasily Arkipov (1962), Damascus Titan missile explosion (1980), Able Archer 83 war exercise in Europe, Stanislav Petrov, etc.
• Surviving a nuclear explosion/war
• What happens in a nuclear bomb explosion
• Short terms and long term consequences of a nuclear exchange
• Nuclear Winter
• Nuclear protests & films (On the Beach, Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, War Games, The Day After)
• Getting to Nuclear Zero: Stockpile reduction, No First Use, No Launch on Warning, shift taboo from not using them to not owning them,
• Reagan and Gorbachev and arms reductions
• North Korea, China/Taiwan
• Göbekli Tepe and post-apocalyptic world.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss423_Nick_Bostrom_2024_04_16.mp3Download MP3Nick Bostrom’s previous book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, changed the global conversation on AI and became a New York Times bestseller. It focused on what might happen if AI development goes wrong. But what if things go right? Suppose that we develop superintelligence safely, govern it well, and make good use of the cornucopian wealth and near magical technological powers that this technology can unlock. If this transition to the machine intelligence era goes well, human labor becomes obsolete. We would thus enter a condition of “post-instrumentality” in which our efforts are not needed for any practical purpose. Furthermore, at technological maturity, human nature becomes entirely malleable. Here we confront a challenge that is not technological but philosophical and spiritual. In such a solved world, what is the point of human existence? What gives meaning to life? What do we do all day?

Bostrom’s new book, Deep Utopia, shines new light on these old questions and gives us glimpses of a different kind of existence, which might be ours in the future.

Nick Bostrom is a Professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute. Bostrom is the world’s most cited philosopher aged 50 or under. He is the author of more than 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), Human Enhancement (2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), a New York Times bestseller which sparked a global conversation about the future of AI. His work has pioneered many of the ideas that frame current thinking about humanity’s future (such as the concept of an existential risk, the simulation argument, the vulnerable world hypothesis, the unilateralist’s curse, etc.), while some of his recent work concerns the moral status of digital minds. His writings have been translated into more than 30 languages; he is a repeat main-stage TED speaker; and he has been interviewed more than 1,000 times by media outlets around the world. He has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. He has an academic background in theoretical physics, AI, and computational neuroscience as well as philosophy.

Bostrom and Shermer discuss:

• The Future of Life Institute’s Open Letter calling for a pause on “giant AI experiments”
• Eliezer Yudkowsky Time OpEd: “Shut It All Down” — “Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in ‘maybe possibly some remote chance,’ but as in ‘that is the obvious thing that would happen.’ If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter.”
• Utopia, Dystopia, Protopia
• Would it be boring to live in a perfect world?
• If we lived forever with everything we need, what would be the purpose of life?
• Trekonomics, post-scarcity economics
• The hedonic treadmill and positional wealth values—will people never be satisfied with “enough”?
• Overpopulation of the 1960s and today’s birth dearth
• Colonizing the galaxy (von Neumann probes, O’Neill cylinders, Dyson spheres)
• The Fermi paradox: where is everyone?
• Mind uploading and immortality
• Examples of Technological Maturity
• Google’s Gemini AI debacle
• Large Language Models
• ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5 and beyond
• The alignment problem
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?
• The hard problem of consciousness
• How would we know if an AI system was sentient?
• Can AI systems be conscious?

On Mind Uploading and Replicating / Resurrecting Everyone Who Ever Lived(An excerpt from Michael Shermer’s 2018 book Heavens on Earth.)

The sums involved in achieving immortality through the duplication or resurrection scenarios are not to be underestimated. There are around 85 billion neurons in a human brain, each with about a thousand synaptic links, for a total of 100 trillion connections to be accurately preserved and replicated. This is a staggering level of complexity made all the more so by the additional glial cells in the brain, which provide support and insulation for neurons and can change the actions of firing neurons, so these cells better be preserved as well in any duplication or resurrection scenario, just in case. Estimates of the ratio of glial cells to neurons in a brain vary from 1:1 to 10:1. If you’re not a lightning calculator, that computes to a total brain cell count of somewhere between 170 billion and 850 billion. Then factor in the hundreds or thousands of synaptic connections between each of the 85 billion neurons, adding approximately 100 trillion synaptic connections total for each brain. That’s not all. There are around ten billion proteins per neuron, which effect how memories are stored, plus the countless extracellular molecules in between those tens of billions of brain cells.

These estimates are just for the brain and do not even include the rest of the nervous system outside of the skull—what neuroscientists call the “embodied brain” or the “extended mind” and which many philosophers of mind believe is necessary for normal cognition. So you might want to have this extended mind resurrected or uploaded along with your mind. After all, you are not just your internal thoughts and emotions disconnected from your body. Many of your thoughts and emotions are intimately entwined with how your body interacts with its environment, so any preserved connectome, to be fully operational as recreating the experience of what it is like to be a sentient being, would also need to be housed in a body. So we would need a warehouse of brainless clones or very sophisticated robots prepared to have these uploaded mind neural units installed. How many? Well, to avoid the charge of elitism, it’s only fair that everyone who ever lived be resurrected, so that means multiplying the staggering data package for one person by 108 billion.

Then there’s the relationship between memory and life history. Our memory is not like a videotape that can be played back on the viewing screen of our minds. When an event happens to us, a selective impression of it is made on the brain through the senses. As that sense impression wends its way through different neural networks, where it ends up depends on what type of memory it is. As a memory is processed and prepared for long-term storage we rehearse it and in the process it is changed. This editing process depends on previous memories, subsequent events and memories, and emotions. This process recurs trillions of times in the course of a lifetime, to the point where we have to wonder if we have memories of actual events, or memories of the memories of those events, or even memories of memories of memories…. What’s the “true” memory? There is no such thing. Our memories are the product of trillions of synaptic neuronal connections that are constantly being edited, redacted, reinforced, and extinguished, such that a resurrection of a human with memories intact will depend on when in the individual’s life history the replication or resurrection is implemented.

In his book The Physics of Immortality the physicist Frank Tipler calculates that an Omega Point computer in the far future will contain 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123 bits (a 1 followed by 10123 zeros), powerful enough, he says, to resurrect everyone who ever lived. That may be—it is a staggeringly large number—but is even an Omega Point computer powerful enough to reconstruct all of the historical contingencies and necessities in which a person lived, such as the weather, climate, geography, economic cycles, recessions and depressions, social trends, religious movements, wars, political revolutions, paradigm shifts, ideological revolutions, and the like, on top of duplicating our genome and connectome? It seems unlikely, but if so GOSH would also need to duplicate all of the individual conjunctures and interactions between that person and all other persons as they intersect with and influence each other in each of those lifetimes. Then multiply all that by the 108 billion people who ever lived or are currently living. Whatever the number, it would have to be even larger than the famed Googolplex (10 to the power of a googol, with a googol being 10100, or 1010100) from which Google and its Googleplex headquarters derived its name. Even a googol of googolplexes would not suffice. In essence, it would require the resurrection of the entire universe and its many billions of years of history. Inconceivable.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss422_Robert_Zubrin_2024_04_13.mp3Download MP3When Robert Zubrin published his classic book The Case for Mars a quarter century ago, setting foot on the Red Planet seemed a fantasy. Today, manned exploration is certain, and as Zubrin affirms in The New World on Mars, so too is colonization. From the astronautical engineer venerated by NASA and today’s space entrepreneurs, here is what we will achieve on Mars and how.

SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are building fleets of space vehicles to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passages to America. We will settle on Mars, and with our knowledge of the planet, analyzed in depth by Dr. Zubrin, we will utilize the resources and tackle the challenges that await us. What we will we build? Populous Martian city-states producing air, water, food, power, and more. Zubrin’s Martian economy will pay for necessary imports and generate income from varied enterprises, such as real estate sales—homes that are airtight and protect against cosmic space radiation, with fish-farm aquariums positioned overhead, letting in sunlight and blocking cosmic rays while providing fascinating views. Zubrin even predicts the Red Planet customs, social relations, and government—of the people, by the people, for the people, with inalienable individual rights—that will overcome traditional forms of oppression to draw Earth immigrants. After all, Mars needs talent.

With all of this in place, Zubrin’s Red Planet will become a pressure cooker for invention in bioengineering, synthetic biology, robotics, medicine, nuclear energy, and more, benefiting humans on Earth, Mars, and beyond. We can create this magnificent future, making life better, less fatalistic. The New World on Mars proves that there is no point killing each other over provinces and limited resources when, together, we can create planets.

Robert Zubrin is former president of the aerospace R&D company Pioneer Astronautics, which performs advanced space research for NASA, the US Air Force, the US Department of Energy, and private companies. He is the founder and president of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars, leading the Society’s successful effort to build the first simulated human Mars exploration base in the Canadian Arctic and growing the organization to include 7,000 members in 40 countries. A nuclear and astronautical engineer, Zubrin began his career with Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin) as a Senior Engineer involved in the design of advanced interplanetary missions. His “Mars Direct” plan for near-term human exploration of Mars was commended by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and covered in The Economist, Fortune, Air and Space Smithsonian, Newsweek (cover story), Time, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, as well as on BBC, PBS TV, CNN, the Discovery Channel, and National Public Radio. Zubrin is also the author of twelve books, including The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, with more than 100,000 copies in print in America alone and now in its 25th Anniversary Edition. He lives with his wife, Hope, a science teacher, in Golden, Colorado. His latest book is: The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet. The next big Mars Society conference in Seattle August 8-11.

Read Zubrin’s discussion of his paper on panspermia for seeding like on Earth.

Shermer and Zubrin discuss:

• Why not start with the moon?
• What’s it like on Mars? Like the top of Mt. Everest?
• Was Mars ever like Earth? Water, life, etc.?
• How much will it cost to go to Mars?
• How to get people to Mars: food, water, radiation, boredom?
• Where on Mars should people settle?
• What are “natural resources”?
• Resources on Mars already there vs. need to be produced
• Analogies with Europeans colonizing North America
• Public vs. private enterprise for space exploration
• Economics on Mars
• Politics on Mars
• Lessons from the Red Planet for the Blue Planet
• Ingersoll’s insight: free speech & thought > science & technology > machines as our slaves > moon landing. “This is something that free people can do.”
• Liberty in space: won’t the most powerful people on Mars threaten to shut off your air if you don’t obey?
• Independent City-States on Mars
• Direct vs. representative democracy
• America as a model for what we can create on Mars
• Are new frontiers needed for civilization to continue?
• The worst idea ever: that the total amount of potential resources is fixed.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss421_Eve_Herold_2024_04_09.mp3Download MP3If there’s one universal trait among humans, it’s our social nature. The craving to connect is universal, compelling, and frequently irresistible. This concept is central to Robots and the People Who Love Them. Socially interactive robots will soon transform friendship, work, home life, love, healthcare, warfare, education, and nearly every nook and cranny of modern life. This book is an exploration of how we, the most gregarious creatures in the food chain, could be changed by social robots. On the other hand, it considers how we will remain the same, and asks how human nature will express itself when confronted by a new class of beings created in our own image.

Drawing upon recent research in the development of social robots, including how people react to them, how in our minds the boundaries between the real and the unreal are routinely blurred when we interact with them, and how their feigned emotions evoke our real ones, science writer Eve Herold takes readers through the gamut of what it will be like to live with social robots and still hold on to our humanity. This is the perfect book for anyone interested in the latest developments in social robots and the intersection of human nature and artificial intelligence and robotics, and what it means for our future.

Eve Herold is an award-winning science writer and consultant in the scientific and medical nonprofit space. A longtime communications and policy executive for scientific organizations, she currently serves as Director of Policy Research and Education for the Healthspan Action Coalition. She has written extensively about issues at the crossroads of science and society, including stem cell research and regenerative medicine, aging and longevity, medical implants, transhumanism, robotics and AI and bioethical issues in leading-edge medicine. Previous books include Stem Cell Wars and Beyond Human, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Vice, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, among others. She’s a frequent contributor to the online science magazine, Leaps, and is the recipient of the 2019 Arlene Eisenberg Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Shermer and Herold discuss:

• What happened to our flying cars and jetpacks from The Jetsons?
• What is a robot, anyway? And what are social robots?
• Oskar Kokoschka, Alma Mahler, and the female doll
• Robot nannies, friends, therapists, caregivers, and lovers
• Sex robots
• The uncanny valley: roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970
• Robots in science fiction
• Psychological states: anthropomorphism, effectance (the need to interact effectively with one’s environment), theory of mind (onto robots), social connectedness
• “Personal, social, emotional, home robots”
• Emotions, animism, mind
• Emotional intelligence
• Turing Test
• Artificial intelligence and natural intelligence
• What is AI and AGI?
• The alignment problem
• Large Language Models
• ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5 and beyond
• Robopocalypse
• Robo soldiers
• What is “mind”, “thinking”, and “consciousness”, and how do molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes?
• Westworld: Robot sentience?
• The hard problem of consciousness
• The self and other minds
• How would we know if an AI system was sentient?
• Can AI systems be conscious?
• Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!?
• Self-driving cars
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss420_Lance_Grande_2024_04_06.mp3Download MP3Thousands of religions have adherents today, and countless more have existed throughout history. What accounts for this astonishing diversity?

This extraordinarily ambitious and comprehensive book demonstrates how evolutionary systematics and philosophy can yield new insight into the development of organized religion. Lance Grande―a leading evolutionary systematist―examines the growth and diversification of hundreds of religions over time, highlighting their historical interrelationships. Combining evolutionary theory with a wealth of cultural records, he explores the formation, extinction, and diversification of different world religions, including the many branches of Asian cyclicism, polytheism, and monotheism.

Grande deploys an illuminating graphic system of evolutionary trees to illustrate historical interrelationships among the world’s major religious traditions, rejecting colonialist and hierarchical “ladder of progress” views of evolution. Extensive and informative illustrations clearly and vividly indicate complex historical developments and help readers grasp the breadth of interconnections across eras and cultures.

The Evolution of Religions marshals compelling evidence, starting far back in time, that all major belief systems are related, despite the many conflicts that have taken place among them. By emphasizing these broad historical interconnections, this book promotes the need for greater tolerance and deeper, unbiased understanding of cultural diversity. Such traits may be necessary for the future survival of humanity.

Lance Grande is the Negaunee Distinguished Service Curator, Emeritus, of the Field Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Chicago. He is a specialist in evolutionary systematics, paleontology, and biology who has a deep interest in the interdisciplinary applications of scientific method and philosophy. His many books include Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums (2017) and The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time (2013). His new book is The Evolution of Religions: A History of Related Traditions.

Shermer and Grande discuss:

• Why is a paleontologist and evolutionary theorist interested in religion?
• Evolutionary systematics and comparativism in evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the history of religion
• What is a comparative systematicist?
• E. O. Wilson’s consilience approach
• Agnostic approach: not addressing the truth value of any one religion
• What is religion?
• Variety: 10,000 different religions: Christianity (33%), Islam (23%), Hinduism/Buddhism (23%), Judaism (0.2%), Other (10%), Agnosticism (10%), Atheism (2%)
• Evolutionary trees of religion
• Biological vs. cultural evolution & diversification: Lamarkian vs. Darwinian
• Historical colonialist progressivism and social Darwinism
• Frans Boaz, Margaret Meade, historical particularism
• Rather than focusing on differences, focus on similarities
• Nature/Nurture & The Blank Slate in anthropology & the social sciences
• Early evolutionary origins of religion: the cognitive revolution, agenticity, patternicity, theory of mind, animism, spiritism, polytheism
• Gobekli Tepe as the earliest religious ceremonial structure
• Machu Picchu and Inca religion
• Human sacrifice and religion
• Apocalypto
• Pizzaro, Atahualpa, and Spanism/European colonialism & eradication of New World religions
• Time’s arrow and Time’s cycle: Asian Cyclicism
• Dharmic religion (India), Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shinoism (Hirohito)
• Old World Hard Polytheism (vs. Soft?) & New World Hard Polytheism (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Celtic, Greek, Old Norse, Siberian totemism, Alaskan totemism
• Colonialism and missionaries extinguished many polytheistic religions
• Linear Monotheism: Atenism, Zoroastrianism, El, Yahweh, Jehovah, Monad, Allah (linear time: one birth, one life, one death, one eternal afterlife; dualistic cosmology: good vs. evil, light vs. dark, heaven vs. hell); proselytic: conversion efforts
• Abrahamic Monotheism 6th century BCE Second Temple Judaism and Samaritanism
• Included prophets: Noah, Abraham, Moses (60% of all religious people today)
• Tanakh sacred scripture 6th century BCE: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Quran
• Jesu-venerationism (1st century CE): Ebionism (Jesus as prophet but not divine), Traditional Christianity, Biblical Demiurgism (primal good god Monad, evil creator spirit Demiurge; saw Jesus as the spiritual emanation of the Monad), Islam
• Reformation: Catholicism split into Protestantism, Anglicanism
• Islam: revered 25 prophets from Adam to Jesus, ending with Muhammad
• Expansion of Islam through conquests in the 7th and 8th centuries CE
• 4 Generalizations:
  • Organized Religions are historically related at one ideological level or another (illustrated by trees);
  • Largest major branches today were historically intertwined with major political powers;
  • Authority of women declined with the rise of male dominated pantheons, empires, clergies, caliphates;
  • Religion played a role in our species’ early ability to adapt to its social and physical environment: tribalism was a competitive advantage for early humans in which communal societies that developed agriculture, commerce, educational facilities, and armies out-competed less communitarian groups.

Show NotesHow We BelieveIn my 2000 book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, I defined religion as “a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to create and promote myths, to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the community.” That is, there are two primary purposes of religion:

1. The creation of stories and myths that address the deepest questions we can ask ourselves: Where did we come from? Why are we here? What does our ultimate future hold?
2. The production of moral systems to provide social cohesion for the most social of all the social primates. God figures prominently in both these modes as the ultimate subject of mythmaking and the final arbiter of moral dilemmas and enforcer of ethical precepts.

From Shermer’s book Truth“Jesus was a great spiritual teacher who had a profound effect on many people,” writes Lance Grande in his magisterial The Evolution of Religions, admitting that “he became what is probably the most influential person in history.” But this says nothing about the verisimilitude of the miracle claims made in Jesus’ name. In fact, as Grande notes, neither during his own lifetime (4BC-30 CE), nor in the earliest writings of the New Testament by Paul, were miracle claims made in Jesus’s name. Even Paul’s mention of the resurrection of Christ was described in 1 Corinthians (15:44) as a spiritual event rather than a literal one: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” In Paul’s writings about Christ, says Grande, “he speaks of him in a mystical sense, as a spiritual entity of human consciousness.” Many contemporary groups, in fact, “saw Christ as a spirit that possessed the man Jesus at his baptism and left him before his death at the crucifixion” (called “separationism”). But since political monarchs in the first century CE were treated as divine, Christian proselytizers began to refer to Jesus as the “King of Kings,” and so came to pass the deification of an otherwise mortal man. Here is how Grande recaps the transformation:

Reports of specific miracles only began to appear several decades after the death of Jesus, in the Gospel of Mark (65-70 CE) and in later gospels (80-100CE). This suggests that stories of miracles (e.g., controlling the weather, creating loaves and fishes out of nothing, turning water into wine, healing the sick, and raising the physical dead) were layered into the story of Jesus as expressions of an ultimate God experience.

And as is typical of myths in the making, in the retelling across peoples, spaces, and generations, layers of improbability are added as a test of faith:

Once the stories of miracles began to appear in early Christianity, they were retold repeatedly, until they became ingrained beliefs. More stories were added, such as miracles about singing angels, stars announcing earthly happenings, and even a fetus (that of John the Baptist in his mother Elizabeth’s womb) leaping to acknowledge the anticipated power of another fetus (that of Jesus in his mother Mary’s womb). These details, many of which probably began as metaphorical lessons, gradually became accepted by many followers as literal historic truths. It is probable that some of these stories were never intended as documents of historical fact.

From metaphorical lessons to historic truths. Perhaps this is what the author of the Gospel of John meant when he wrote (John 20:31): “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss419_Maggie_Jackson_2024_04_02.mp3Download MP3In an era of terrifying unpredictability, we race to address complex crises with quick, sure algorithms, bullet points, and tweets. How could we find the clarity and vision so urgently needed today by being unsure? Uncertain is about the triumph of doing just that. A scientific adventure tale set on the front lines of a volatile era, this epiphany of a book by award-winning author Maggie Jackson shows us how to skillfully confront the unexpected and the unknown, and how to harness not-knowing in the service of wisdom, invention, mutual understanding, and resilience.

Long neglected as a topic of study and widely treated as a shameful flaw, uncertainty is revealed to be a crucial gadfly of the mind, jolting us from the routine and the assumed into a space for exploring unseen meaning. Far from luring us into inertia, uncertainty is the mindset most needed in times of flux and a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day. In laboratories, political campaigns, and on the frontiers of artificial intelligence, Jackson meets the pioneers decoding the surprising gifts of being unsure. Each chapter examines a mode of uncertainty-in-action, from creative reverie to the dissent that spurs team success. Step by step, the art and science of uncertainty reveal being unsure as a skill set for incisive thinking and day-to-day flourishing.

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her pioneering writings on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. Winner of the 2020 Dorothy Lee Book Award for excellence in technology criticism, her book Distracted was compared by FastCompany.com to Silent Spring for its prescient critique of technology’s excesses, named a Best Summer Book by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and was a prime inspiration for Google’s 2018 global initiative to promote digital well-being. Jackson is also the author of Living with Robots and The State of the American Mind. Her expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Business Week, Vanity Fair, Wired.com, O Magazine, and The Times of London; on MSNBC, NPR’s All Things Considered, Oprah Radio, The Takeaway, and on the Diane Rehm Show and the Brian Lehrer Show; and in multiple TV segments and film documentaries worldwide. Her speaking career includes appearances at Google, Harvard Business School, and the Chautauqua Institute. Jackson lives with her family in New York and Rhode Island.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss418_Coleman_Hughes_2024_03_30.mp3Download MP3As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents–who lived through segregation. The End of Race Politics is the culmination of his years-long search for an answer.

Contemplative yet audacious, The End of Race Politics is necessary reading for anyone who questions the race orthodoxies of our time. Hughes argues for a return to the ideals that inspired the American Civil Rights movement, showing how our departure from the colorblind ideal has ushered in a new era of fear, paranoia, and resentment marked by draconian interpersonal etiquette, failed corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, and poisonous race-based policies that hurt the very people they intend to help. Hughes exposes the harmful side effects of Kendi-DiAngelo style antiracism, from programs that distribute emergency aid on the basis of race to revisionist versions of American history that hide the truth from the public.

Through careful argument, Hughes dismantles harmful beliefs about race, proving that reverse racism will not atone for past wrongs and showing why race-based policies will lead only to the illusion of racial equity. By fixating on race, we lose sight of what it really means to be anti-racist. A racially just, colorblind society is possible. Hughes gives us the intellectual tools to make it happen.

Coleman Hughes is a writer, podcaster and opinion columnist who specializes in issues related to race, public policy and applied ethics. Coleman’s writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Quillette, The City Journal and The Spectator. He appeared on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2021.

Shermer and Hughes discuss:

• If he is “half-black, half-Hispanic” why is he considered “black”?
• What is race biologically and culturally?
• Race as a social construction
• Population genetics and race differences: sports, I.Q., crime, etc.
• Base Rate Neglect, Base Rate Taboos
• The real state of race relations in America: surveys, call-back studies, search data, etc.
• George Floyd, BLM, Ibram X Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Isabella Wilkinson, Ta-Nehisi Coates and the neo-racists
• Institutionalized neo-racism: the academy and business
• What it means to be “colorblind”
• Viewpoint epistemology and race
• Affirmative action and correcting for past wrongs
• Lyndon Johnson’s famous quote, June 4, 1965, Howard University: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”
• Why are there still big gaps in income, wealth, home ownership, CEO representation, Congressional representation, etc.?
• Myth of Black Weakness
• Myth of No Progress
• Myth of Undoing the Past
• The Fall of Minneapolis
• Reparations
• The future of colorblindness.

Read Michael H. Bernstein’s review of Coleman Hughes book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss417_Max_Stearns_2024_03_26.mp3Download MP3Order the Artificial Intelligence issue of Skeptic magazine (in print or digital format).

Looking ahead to the 2024 election, most Americans sense that something is deeply wrong with our democracy. We face extreme polarization, increasingly problematic candidates, and a government that can barely function, let alone address urgent challenges. Maxwell Stearns has been a constitutional law professor for over 30 years. He argues that our politics are not merely dysfunctional. Our constitutional system is broken. And without radical reform, the U.S. risks collapse or dictatorship.

In Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy, Stearns argues that we are in the midst of the biggest constitutional crisis since the Civil War, and that the roots of the crisis are in the U.S. Constitution itself. The Framers never intended a two-party system. In fact, they feared entrenched political parties and mistakenly believed they had designed a scheme that avoided them. And yet the structures they created paved the way for our entrenched two-party system.

From the start, our systems of elections and executive accountability thwarted the Framers’ expectations. In the information age, it has spun out of control, and the result is a hyperpolarized Republican-Democratic duopoly that has poisoned our politics and society and threatens to end our democracy. The two-party system now undermines our basic constitutional structures, with separation of powers and checks and balances yielding to hyper-partisan loyalties. Rather than compromises arising from shifting coalitions, we experience ever-widening policy swings based on which party takes control of the White House in increasingly combative elections. The restrictive nature of the choices voters face in each election cycle encourages battles for the souls of the Democratic and Republican Parties, with more moderate voices on one side and more ideologically strident ones on the other. This two-party stranglehold on our politics is exactly what the Framers feared.

To survive as a democracy, we must end the two-party deadlock and introduce more political parties. But viable third parties are a pipe dream in our system given the current rules of the game. Stearns argues that we must change the rules, amend the Constitution, and transform America into a parliamentary democracy. Unlike our two-party presidential system, well-functioning parliamentary systems have multiple political parties that represent an array of perspectives, giving voters more choices that better align with their views. In such systems, parties compete in elections and then, based on the results, form a majority governing coalition. In contrast with the endless hyper-partisanship that pushes Democrats and Republicans further and further apart, coalitions represent the nation’s ideological core, capturing views of multiple parties, accommodating competing positions, and moderating the most extreme ideologies or partisan commitments. This improves the outcomes for citizens, which helps to explain why surveys have found that voters derive greater satisfaction and the governments are more responsive in parliamentary systems.

Achieving a robust parliamentary democracy in the U.S. requires amending the Constitution. Although this is difficult to do, Stearns explains why his specific set of proposals is more politically viable than other increasingly prominent reform proposals, which cannot be enacted, will not end our constitutional crisis, or both. What does he propose doing?

1. Double the size of the House of Representatives, with half continuing to be elected by district, a new cohort elected by party, and the entire chamber based on proportional representation. This reform will allow us to end the two-party duopoly and create space for thriving third-, fourth- and fifth-parties that better align with voters’ values/worldviews.
2. Transform how we choose the president and vice president. Power to choose the president will shift from individual votes processed through the Electoral College to party coalitions within the House of Representatives. They will select the president and vice president from party slates by inviting up to five party leaders, in descending order of representation, to negotiate a majority coalition.
3. Provide a new mechanism for ending a failing presidency. The House can remove the president with a 60 percent no confidence vote based on “maladministration.” This standard is lower than the requirements for impeachment, and the amendments leave the impeachment clause intact. These reforms infuse parliamentary selection, proportional representation, and coalition building into the U.S. constitutional system while retaining and preserving our most essential institutional structures. The proposal would end the two-party system, create space for multiple parties, end partisan gerrymandering, moderate the most extreme ideologies, reduce polarization, and incentivize negotiation and compromise.

Maxwell L. Stearns is the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He has authored dozens of articles and several books on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the economic analysis of law.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss416_Abigail_Shrier_2024_03_23.mp3Download MP3In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z’s mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not helped the staggering number of kids who are lonely, lost, sad and fearful of growing up. What’s gone wrong with America’s youth?

In Bad Therapy, bestselling investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the problem isn’t the kids—it’s the mental health experts. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with child psychologists, parents, teachers, and young people, Shrier explores the ways the mental health industry has transformed the way we teach, treat, discipline, and even talk to our kids. She reveals that most of the therapeutic approaches have serious side effects and few proven benefits. Among her unsettling findings:

• talk therapy can induce rumination, trapping children in cycles of anxiety and depression
• social Emotional Learning handicaps our most vulnerable children, in both public schools and private
• “gentle parenting” can encourage emotional turbulence – even violence – in children as they lash out, desperate for an adult in charge.

Mental health care can be lifesaving when properly applied to children with severe needs, but for the typical child, the cure can be worse than the disease. Bad Therapy is a must – read for anyone questioning why our efforts to bolster America’s kids have backfired – and what it will take for parents to lead a turnaround.

Abigail Shrier received the Barbara Olson Award for Excellence and Independence in Journalism in 2021. Her bestselling book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020), was named a “Best Book” by the Economist and the Times. It has been translated into ten languages. Her new book is Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.

Shermer and Shrier discuss:

• Irreversible Damage redux: WPATH Files
• Darwin’s Dictim: “all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.” What view is this book for or against?
• What’s the problem to be solved? Anecdotes vs. Statistics
• Theories: coddling, social media, screen time, generations/life history theory
• Good and bad therapists and therapies
• Does it work?
• Bad therapists or bad parents or bad schools?
• Parenting styles
• As with trans, social contagion vs. real phenomena now acceptable?
• Iatrogenesis: “originating with the healer” (a healer harming a patient)
• Anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, autism
• ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience): Physical abuse, Sexual abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical neglect, Emotional neglect, Mental illness, Divorce or parental breakup, Substance abuse in the home, Violence against the mother, Incarcerated household member
• Trauma, stress, PTSD, The Body Knows the Score
• Punishment and spanking (corporeal punishment) vs. time outs etc.
• Anti-fragility and resilience
• Diagnosis self-fulfillment: placebo / nocebo effect
• “Doing the work” of therapy
• Goodwill Hunting view of therapy
• Previous quack therapies and psychological pseudoscience:
• The Subliminal Messages scare, the Satanic Panic, the Recovered Memory mania, the Self-Esteem movement, the Multiple Personality craze, the Left-Brain/Right-Brain fad, the Mozart Effect mania, the Vaccine-Autism furor, the Super-predators fear, Attachment Therapy, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program that increased teen drug use, the Scared Straight program that made adolescents more likely to offend, the Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) program that worsened anxiety and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and many more that have plagued psychology and psychiatry.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss415_Dan_Stone_2024_03_19.mp3Download MP3The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked.

Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone—Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London—reveals how the idea of “industrial murder” is incomplete: many were killed where they lived in the most brutal of ways. He outlines the depth of collaboration across Europe, arguing persuasively that we need to stop thinking of the Holocaust as an exclusively German project. He also considers the nature of trauma the Holocaust engendered, and why Jewish suffering has yet to be fully reckoned with. And he makes clear that the kernel to understanding Nazi thinking and action is genocidal ideology, providing a deep analysis of its origins.

Drawing on decades of research, The Holocaust: An Unfinished History upends much of what we think we know about the Holocaust. Stone draws on Nazi documents, but also on diaries, post-war testimonies, and even fiction, urging that, in our age of increasing nationalism and xenophobia, it is vital that we understand the true history of the Holocaust.

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author or editor of numerous articles and books, including: Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press); The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Yale University Press); and Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press). His new book is The Holocaust: An Unfinished History.

Shermer and Stone discuss:

• Why this book now? What is unfinished in the history of the Shoah?
• Holocaust denial: 20% of Americans under 30 who, according to a poll by The Economist, believe the Holocaust is a myth. Another 20% believe it is exaggerated
• Just as “Nazism was the most extreme manifestation of sentiments that were quite common, and for which Hitler acted as a kind of rainmaker or shaman”, suggests Stone, the defeat of his regime has left us with “a dark legacy, a deep psychology of fascist fascination and genocidal fantasy that people turn to instinctively in moments of crisis – we see it most clearly in the alt-right and the online world, spreading into the mainstream, of conspiracy theory”
• What was the Holocaust and why did it happen: intentionalism vs. functionalism
• Ideological roots of Nazism and German anti-Semitism
• “ideology, understood as a kind of phantasmagorical conspiracy theory, as the kernel of Nazi thinking and action”
• From ideas to genocide: magical thinking
• Blood and soil
• Hitler’s willing executioners
• The Holocaust as a continent-wide crime
• Motivations of the executioners
• Polish law prohibiting the accusation of Poles complicit in the Holocaust
• Industrial genocide vs. low-tech mass murder
• The banality of evil
• Nearly half of the Holocaust’s six million victims died of starvation in the ghettos or in “face-to-face” shootings in the east.
• Jews were constrained by a profusion of demeaning legislation. They were forbidden to keep typewriters, musical instruments, bicycles and even pets. The sheer variety of persecution was bewildering. It was also chillingly deceptive, persuading some law-abiding Jews that survival was a matter of falling into line. Stone quotes the wrenching letter of a woman reassuring her loved one that getting transported to Theresienstadt, in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, might be better than living in Germany. “My future place of residence represents a sort of ghetto,” she explained. “It has the advantage that, if one obeys all the rules, one lives in some ways without the restrictions one has here.”
• Wannsee Conference of Jan. 20, 1942
• In March 1942, “75 to 80 percent of the Holocaust’s victims were still alive.” Eleven months later, “80 percent of the Holocaust’s victims were dead.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss414_Eric_Schwitzgebel_2024_03_16.mp3Download MP3Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth—whatever it is—is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open—to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated—or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens.

According to Schwitzgebel’s “Universal Bizarreness” thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary “Universal Dubiety” thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism—a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities.

Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures; Perplexities of Consciousness; and Describing Inner Experience?

Schwitzgebel has studied the behavior of philosophers, particularly ethicists, using empirical methods. The articles he has published investigate whether ethicists behave more ethically than other populations. In a 2009 study, Schwitzgebel investigated the rate at which ethics books were missing from academic libraries compared to similar philosophy books. The study found that ethics books were in fact missing at higher rates than comparable texts in other disciplines. Subsequent research has measured the behavior of ethicists at conferences, the perceptions of other philosophers about ethicists, and the self-reported behavior of ethicists. Schwitzgebel’s research did not find that the ethical behavior of ethicists differed from the behavior of professors in other disciplines. In addition, his research found that the moral beliefs of professional philosophers were just as susceptible to being influenced by irrelevant factors as those of non-philosophers. Schwitzgebel has concluded that, “Professional ethicists appear to behave no differently than do non-ethicists of similar social background.”

Shermer and Schwitzgebel discuss:

• bizarreness
• skepticism
• consciousness and sentience
• AI, Turing Test, sentience, existential threat
• idealism, materialism and the ultimate nature of reality
• solipsism and experimental evidence for the existence of an external world
• Are we living in a computer simulation?
• mind-body problem
• truths: external, internal, objective, subjective, and mind-altering drugs
• anthropic principles and fine-tuning of the universe
• theism, atheism, agnosticism, deism, pantheism, panpsychism
• free will, determinism, compatibilism
• Is the universe predetermined?
• entropy, the arrow of time, and causality
• infinity
• souls and immortality, mind uploading
• multiverse, parallel universes, and many worlds hypothesis
• why there is something rather than nothing.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss413_Leah_Goldstein_2024_03_12.mp3Download MP3A conversation with Leah Goldstein on becoming a kickboxing world champion, ultra-endurance cyclist, and an elite commando combating terrorism. For this she was to be honored at the International Women’s Day event… until she was disinvited and canceled.

This is her story.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss412_Mohamad_Jebara_2024_03_09.mp3Download MP3Over a billion copies of the Qur’an exist – yet it remains an enigma. Its classical Arabic language resists simple translation, and its non-linear style of abstract musings defies categorization. Moreover, those who champion its sanctity and compete to claim its mantle offer widely diverging interpretations of its core message – at times with explosive results.

Building on his intimate portrait of the Qur’an’s prophet in Muhammad the World-Changer, Mohamad Jebara returns with a vivid profile of the book itself. While viewed in retrospect as the grand scripture of triumphant empires, Jebara reveals how the Qur’an unfolded over 22 years amidst intense persecution, suffering, and loneliness. The Life of the Qur’an recounts this vivid drama as a biography examining the book’s obscured heritage, complex revelation, and contested legacy.

The author believes that the Qur’an re-emerges with clarity as a dynamic life force that seeks to inspire human beings to unleash their dormant potential despite often-overwhelming odds – in order to transform themselves and the world.

Mohamad Jebara is a scriptural philologist and prominent exegetist known for his eloquent oratory style as well as his efforts to bridge cultural and religious divides. A semanticist and historian of Semitic cultures, he has served as Chief Imam as well as headmaster of several Qur’anic and Arabic language academies. Jebara has lectured to diverse audiences around the world; briefed senior policy makers; and published in prominent newspapers and magazines. A respected voice in Islamic scholarship, Jebara advocates for positive social change.

Shermer and Jebara discuss:

• Who wrote the Qur’an and why?
• Do Muslims believe it was written by Muhammad divinely inspired, or is it suppose to be the literal words of God/Allah?
• Why do we need a new translation and interpretation of the Qur’an?
• What inspired a Westerner raised in public school to write a biography of Muhammad and a history of the Islamic holy book?
• Is the Muslim world stagnating? And how does the biography of the Quran and Islam’s founder aim to help the situation?
• What is the “Semitic mindset”?
• How is the Qur’an the first “Post-Modern” book?
• Many Westerners believe that the Qur’an endorses violence, Jihad, and Sharia Law over secular laws and constitutions. What does it really say?
• Christianity and Judaism went through the Enlightenment and came out the other side much more tolerant and peaceful. Has Islam had its Enlightenment? Does Islam and the Muslim world need reforming?
• the meaning of “Allahu Akbar”
• women in Islam
• female genital mutilation
• What percentage of Muslims want Sharia Law, and where in the world?

Sharia, or Islamic law, offers moral and legal guidance for nearly all aspects of life – from marriage and divorce, to inheritance and contracts, to criminal punishments. Sharia, in its broadest definition, refers to the ethical principles set down in Islam’s holy book (the Quran) and examples of actions by the Prophet Muhammad (sunna).

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss411_Samuel_Wilkinson_2024_03_05.mp3Download MP3Generations have been taught that evolution implies there is no overarching purpose to our existence, that life has no fundamental meaning. We are merely the accumulation of tens of thousands of intricate molecular accidents. Some scientists take this logic one step further, suggesting that evolution is intrinsically atheistic and goes against the concept of God.

With respect to our evolution, nature seems to have endowed us with competing dispositions, what Wilkinson calls the dual potential of human nature. We are pulled in different directions: selfishness and altruism, aggression and cooperation, lust and love.

By using principles from a variety of scientific disciplines, Yale Professor Samuel Wilkinson provides a framework for human evolution that reveals an overarching purpose to our existence.

Wilkinson claims that this purpose, at least one of them, is to choose between the good and evil impulses that nature has created within us. Our life is a test. This is a truth, as old as history it seems, that has been espoused by so many of the world’s religions. From a certain framework, Wilkinson believes that these aspects of human nature—including how evolution shaped us—are evidence for the existence of a God, not against it.

Closely related to this is meaning. What is the meaning of life? Based on the scientific data, it would seem that one such meaning is to develop deep and abiding relationships. At least that is what most people report are the most meaningful aspects of their lives. This is a function of our evolution. It is how we were created.

Samuel T. Wilkinson is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Yale Depression Research Program. He received his MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His articles have been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He has been the recipient of many awards, including Top Advancements & Breakthroughs from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation; Top Ten Psychiatry Papers by the New England Journal of Medicine, the Samuel Novey Writing Prize in Psychological Medicine (Johns Hopkins); the Thomas Detre Award (Yale University); and the Seymour Lustman Award (Yale University). His new book is Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of our Existence.

Shermer and Wilkinson discuss:

• evolution: random chance or guided process?
• selfishness and altruism
• aggression and cooperation
• inner demons and better angels
• love and lust
• free will and determinism
• the good life
• the good society
• empirical truths, mythic truths, religious truths, pragmatic truths
• Is there a cosmic courthouse where evil will be corrected in the next life?
• theodicy and the problem of evil: Why do bad things happen to good people?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss410_Byron_Reese_2024_03_02.mp3Download MP3Could humans unknowingly be a part of a larger superorganism—one with its own motivations and goals, one that is alive, and conscious, and has the power to shape the future of our species? This is the fascinating theory from author and futurist Byron Reese, who calls this human superorganism “Agora.”

In We Are Agora, Reese starts by asking the question, “What is life and how did it form?” From there, he looks at how multicellular life came about, how consciousness emerged, and how other superorganisms in nature have formed. Then, he poses eight big questions based on the Agora theory, including:

• If ants have colonies, bees have hives, and we have our bodies, how does Agora manifest itself? Does it have a body?
• Can Agora explain things that happen that are both under our control and near universally undesirable, such as war?
• How can Agora theory explain long-term progress we’ve made in the world?

In this unique and ambitious work that spans all of human history and looks boldly into its future, Reese melds science and history to look at the human species from a fresh new perspective. We Are Agora will give readers a better understanding of where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how our fates are intertwined.

Byron Reese is an Austin-based entrepreneur with a quarter-century of experience building and running technology companies. A recognized authority on AI who holds a number of technology patents, Byron is a futurist with a strong conviction that technology will help bring about a new golden age of humanity. He gives talks around the world about how technology is changing work, education, and culture. He is the author of four books on technology; his previous title The Fourth Age was described by the New York Times as “entertaining and engaging.” Bloomberg Businessweek credits Reese with having “quietly pioneered a new breed of media company.” The Financial Times reported that he “is typical of the new wave of internet entrepreneurs out to turn the economics of the media industry on its head.” He and his work have been featured in hundreds of news outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, USA Today, Reader’s Digest, and NPR.

Shermer and Reese discuss:

• What is an organism and what is a superorganism?
• What is life?
• Why do things die?
• the origins of life, multicellular life, and complex organisms
• What is the self?
• emergence
• consciousness
• social insects: bees, ants, termites
• Is the Internet a superorganism?
• Will AI create a superorganism?
• Is AI an existential threat?
• Could AI become sentient or conscious?
• the hard problem of consciousness
• cities as superorganisms
• planetary superorganisms
• Are we living in a simulation?
• Why are we here?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss409_Tali_Sharot_2024_02_27.mp3Download MP3Have you ever noticed that what is thrilling on Monday tends to become boring on Friday? Even exciting relationships, stimulating jobs, and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. People stop noticing what is most wonderful in their own lives. They also stop noticing what is terrible. They get used to dirty air. They stay in abusive relationships. People grow to accept authoritarianism and take foolish risks. They become unconcerned by their own misconduct, blind to inequality, and are more liable to believe misinformation than ever before.

But what if we could find a way to see everything anew? What if you could regain sensitivity, not only to the great things in your life, but also to the terrible things you stopped noticing and so don’t try to change?

Now, neuroscience professor Tali Sharot and Harvard law professor (and presidential advisor) Cass R. Sunstein investigate why we stop noticing both the great and not-so-great things around us and how to “dishabituate” at the office, in the bedroom, at the store, on social media, and in the voting booth. This groundbreaking work, based on decades of research in the psychological and biological sciences, illuminates how we can reignite the sparks of joy, innovate, and recognize where improvements urgently need to be made. The key to this disruption — to seeing, feeling, and noticing again — is change. By temporarily changing your environment, changing the rules, changing the people you interact with — or even just stepping back and imagining change — you regain sensitivity, allowing you to more clearly identify the bad and more deeply appreciate the good.

Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. She is the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab. She has written for outlets including the New York Times, Time, Washington Post, has been a repeated guest on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, a presenter on the BBC, and served as an advisor for global companies and government projects. Her work has won her prestigious fellowships and prizes from the Wellcome Trust, American Psychological Society, British Psychological Society, and others. Her popular TED talks have accumulated more than a dozen million views. Before becoming a neuroscientist, Sharot worked in the financial industry. She is the author of award-winning books: The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind. Her new book, co-authored with Cass Sunstein, is Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There.

Shermer and Sharot discuss:

• the best day of her life
• the evolutionary origins of habituation
• habituation at work, at home, and in the bedroom
• Why don’t we habituate to extreme pain?
• Twilight Zone episode: criminal Henry dies and goes to heaven where he gets everything he wants but grows bored and wants to go to the other place
• Conflicting Problem: Why is it that even when we have wonderful things in our life – a great job, a loving family, a comfortable house – those things don’t necessarily bring us daily joy when they really should? Why is it that even when terrible things are happening around us — sexism, racism, cracks in our personal relationships, inefficiencies at the workplace – we often carry on and perhaps don’t even notice, and therefore don’t try to change these things?
• midlife crisis
• marriage, romance, monogamy, infidelity
• depression
• happiness and variety
• Negativity Bias
• social media
• creativity and habituation disruption
• lying and misinformation
• Trump: habituation to his lies, lawsuits, etc.
• Illusory Truth Effect: the tendency to believe repeated statements
• Truth Bias: the tendency to believe what we are told
• Tali’s experience getting scammed in London
• risk habituation
• discrimination, anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry
• tyranny
• moral progress: we have to overcome the habituation of lacking rights (women in the 1970s)
• preference falsification: people often fail to say what they like and think because of existing social norms
• pluralistic ignorance and the rise of the Nazis.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss408_Ernest_Scheyder_2024_02_24.mp3Download MP3A new economic war for critical minerals has begun, and The War Below is an urgent dispatch from its front lines. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, and other vital building blocks. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change and powering crucial technologies. These tensions have sparked a worldwide reckoning over the sourcing of necessary materials, and no one understands the complexities of these issues better than Ernest Scheyder, whose exclusive access to sites around the globe has allowed him to gain unparalleled insights into a future without fossil fuels.

The War Below reveals the explosive brawl among industry titans, conservationists, community groups, policymakers, and many others over whether some places are too special to mine or whether the habitats of rare plants, sensitive ecosystems, Indigenous holy sites, and other places should be dug up for their riches.

With vivid and engaging writing, Scheyder shows the human toll of this war and explains why recycling and other newer technologies have struggled to gain widespread use. He also expertly chronicles Washington’s attempts to wean itself off supplies from China, the global leader in mineral production and processing. The War Below paints a powerfully honest and nuanced picture of what is at stake in this new fight for energy independence, revealing how America and the rest of the world’s hunt for the “new oil” directly affects us all.

Ernest Scheyder is a senior correspondent for Reuters, covering the green energy transition and the minerals that undergird it. He previously covered the US shale oil revolution, politics, and the environment, and held roles at the Associated Press and the Bangor Daily News. A native of Maine, Scheyder is a graduate of the University of Maine and Columbia Journalism School. Visit his website at ErnestScheyder.com and follow him on Twitter @ErnestScheyder.

Shermer and Scheyder discuss:

• how, as a Reuters reporter, Scheyder came to this issue
• rare earth metals
• lithium and copper
• aluminum and other precious metals
• How much rare earth metals will we need by 2050, 2100, and beyond?
• How do lithium-ion batteries work compared to lead-acid? What are the alternatives?
• How crucial are these technologies necessary to combat climate change?
• Will EVs completely replace all other automobiles?
• Can renewables completely replace fossil fuels without nuclear?
• recycling electronic waste
• how mining works in the U.S., China, Chile, Russia, elsewhere
• types of mines: hard-rock vs. soft-rock, open-pit vs. deep earth
• public vs. private ownership of mines (Bureau of Mines)
• what companies like Apple and Tesla are doing about the coming problem
• Native American rights to land containing valuable mines
• third world labor exploitation
• electric leaf blowers and weed wackers.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss407_Paul_Offit_2024_02_20.mp3Download MP3Four years on, Covid is clearly here to stay. So what do we do now? Drawing on his expertise as one of the world’s top virologists, Dr. Paul Offit helps weary readers address that crucial question in this brief, definitive guide.

As a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee and a former member of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices to the CDC, Offit has been in the room for the creation of policies that have affected hundreds of millions of people. In these pages, he marshals the power of hindsight to offer a fascinating frontline look at where we were, where we are, and where we’re heading in the now-permanent fight against the disease.

Accompanied by a companion website populated with breaking news and relevant commentary, this book contains everything you need to know to navigate Covid going forward. Offit addresses fundamental issues like boosters, immunity induced by natural infection, and what it means to be fully vaccinated. He explores the dueling origin stories of the disease, tracing today’s strident anti-vax rhetoric to twelve online sources and tracking the fallout. He breaks down long Covid—what it is, and what the known treatments are. And he looks to the future, revealing whether we can make a better vaccine, whether it should be mandated, and providing a crucial list of fourteen takeaways to eradicate further spread.

Paul A. Offit, M.D. is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. He has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, 60 Minutes, and many other programs. Offit has published more than 170 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC and WHO. In 2021 he was awarded the Edward Jenner Lifetime Achievement Award in Vaccinology from the 15th Vaccine Congress. He is the author of numerous books including: Do You Believe in Magic?: Vitamins, Supplements and All things Natural; Vaccinated: From Cowpox to mRNA, the Remarkable Story of Vaccines; Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All; You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusion to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation; and Pandora’s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong. His new book is Tell Me When It’s Over: An Expert’s Guide to Deciphering Covid Myths and Navigating Our Post-Pandemic World.

Shermer and Offit discuss:

• How do you know that the Covid-19 vaccines are not the 8th story of science gone wrong, or part of the long and risky history of medical innovation?
• Loss of trust in medical and scientific institutions (Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins)
• Overall assessment of what went right and wrong with the Covid-19 pandemic
• Pandemic vs. epidemic
• Influenza caused 800,000 hospitalizations & 60,000 deaths
• Testing, masking, social isolation
• Mandates vs. recommendations
• Is the cure worse than the disease?
• Closing of schools, restaurants, salons, parks, beaches, hiking trails, etc.
• The cost to the economy of the shut downs
• The cost to the education of children of the shut downs
• Comparative method: which countries and states did better or worse?
• Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley
• Lab Leak hypothesis vs. Zoonomic hypothesis
• Living with SARS-CoV-2 and its variants
• Vaccines and autism
• RFK, Jr. and his conspiracy theories
• Debating anti-vaxxers (Rogan and elsewhere)
• Treatments: hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, remdesivir, Vitamin D, Paxlovid, Tamiflu, retroviral medicines, monoclonal antibodies, convalescent plasma
• High risk vs. low risk groups; age, sex, race, pregnancy, weight, preconditions, immune compromised
• Myocarditis, Robert Malone, mRNA vaccines, Joe Rogan, RFKJ, Peter Hotez, Del Bigtree
• Spike protein made by Covid vaccines: toxic? (the spike protein the mRNA vaccines make cannot fuse to our cells. Normally, SARS-CoV-2 attaches to cells via the spike protein, then enters cells through a process called fusion….p. 107
• Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya censored for signing the Great Barrington Declaration (“focused protection” of the people most at risk): Wall Street Journal OpEd: “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?”, which argued there was little evidence to support shelter-in-place orders and quarantines In March 2021, Bhattacharya called the Covid-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” and argued that “The harm to people is catastrophic”. Blacklisted by Twitter.

How civilization might change:

• Medical: Coronavirus is here to stay—herd immunity naturally and through vaccines
• Personal and Public Health: handshakes, hugs, and other human contact; masks, social distancing, hygiene
• Economics and Business
• Travel, conferences, meetings
• Marriage, dating, sex, and home life
• Entertainment, vacations, bars and restaurants
• Education and schools
• Politics and society (and a better understanding of freedom and why it is restricted).

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss406_Rob_Henderson_2024_02_17.mp3Download MP3In this raw coming-of-age memoir, in the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, The Other Wes Moore, and Someone Has Led This Child to Believe, Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the concept of “luxury beliefs” — ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate.

Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. Divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence marked his adolescent and teen years, propelling Henderson to join the military upon completing high school.

An unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts Henderson’s expectation-defying young life and juxtaposes his story with those of his friends who wound up incarcerated or killed. He retreads the steps and missteps he took to escape the drama and disorder of his youth. As he navigates the peaks and valleys of social class, Henderson finds that he remains on the outside looking in. His greatest achievements — a military career, an undergraduate education from Yale, a PhD from Cambridge — feel like hollow measures of success. He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable.

Rob Henderson grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and the rural town of Red Bluff, California. He joined the US Air Force at the age of seventeen. Once described as “self-made” by the New York Times, Rob subsequently received a BS from Yale University and a PhD in psychology from St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and more. His weekly newsletter is sent to more than forty thousand subscribers. Learn more at RobKHenderson.com. His new book is Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.

Shermer and Henderson discuss:

• Autobiographies and memoirs and the hindsight bias
• Memoirs: Tara Westover, Educated; Amber Scorah, Leaving the Witness; J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy; Yeonmi Park, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
• Genes, Environment, and Luck/Contingency
• Childhood: drug-addicted mother, absence father, 10 different foster homes
• 60% of boys in foster care are later incarcerated; 3% graduate from college
• Marriage, divorce and childhood outcomes; one parent vs. two
• Poverty, welfare programs, and social safety nets
• The trouble with boys and men: competitiveness, risk taking, and violence, “the young male syndrome, Margo Wilson and Martin Daly
• Alcohol, drugs, depression
• Choice: top 1% of educational attainment or top 1% of childhood instability
• Luxury beliefs of educated elites
• College education vs. having a parent who cares enough to make sure you get to class
• Wealthy but unstable home vs. low-income but stable home
• How many who wield the most influence in society only pay lip service to inequality
• What it was like in the military
• What it was like at Yale
• What it was like at Cambridge
• What does it mean to be “self-made”?
• Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works
• Jonathan Haidt’s lecture on the telos of universities
• Nicolas Christakas and Yale’s privileged students
• Jordan Peterson
• The Coddling and Canceling of the American Mind
• Self-Help books
• Warrior-Scholar Project.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss405_Sandro_Galea_2024_02_13.mp3Download MP3The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health—a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As scientific expertise became entangled with political motivations, the public-health establishment found itself mired in political encampment.

It was, as Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the principles of free speech, open debate, and the pursuit of knowledge through reasoned inquiry that should inform the work of public health.

Across fifty essays, Within Reason chronicles how public health became enmeshed in the insidious social trends that accelerated under Covid-19. Galea challenges this intellectual drift towards intolerance and absolutism while showing how similar regressions from reason undermined social progress during earlier eras. Within Reason builds an incisive case for a return to critical, open inquiry as a guiding principle for the future public health we want—and a future we must work to protect.

Shermer and Galea discuss: his immigrant experience in the U.S. coming from Malta • why he left practicing medicine for public health • public health vs. private health • mask/vaccine recommendations vs. mandates • the case against moralism in public health • Medicare for all, UBI, generous social safety net, reparation for slavery, liberal immigration policies, commonsense gun safety reform • public health and: race, class, sex/gender • moralizing and public health.

Dr. Sandro Galea is a physician, epidemiologist, author and the Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published more than 1000 scientific journal articles, 75 chapters, and 24 books, and his research has been featured extensively in current periodicals and newspapers. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto and graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. Dr. Galea was named one of Time magazine’s epidemiology innovators and has been listed as one of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.” He is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Epidemiological Society. He is the author of The Contagion Next Time and Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. His new book is Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time.

Shermer and Galea discuss:

• his immigrant experience in the U.S. coming from Malta
• why he left practicing medicine for public health
• What is public health?
• public health vs. private health
• mask recommendations vs. mandates
• vaccine recommendations vs. mandates
• the case against moralism in public health
• Galea’s progressive views: Medicare for all, UBI, generous social safety net, reparation for slavery, liberal immigration policies, commonsense gun safety reform
• public health/healthcare and: race, class, sex/gender
• moralizing and public health.

Show NotesStigma: smoking: “We can now plausibly say the choice to smoke or not smoke is, in a sense, a choice between right and wrong. The same was to some extent true of COVID-19. We did know that wearing masks and limiting our physical interaction would reduce the spread of the disease. Taking these steps was—there’s no getting around it—a matter of personal responsibility, a moral consideration, and it was right for us to acknowledge this.”

Working remotely adversely affected the poor over the rich, as did closing schools, restaurants, etc. “If we ignore the populations whose lives are shaped by conditions different from those that shape our own, we are acting contrary to the spirit of liberalism. COVID provided many examples of how such conditions create gaps in the lived experience of populations. We know, for example, that there is a clear link between income quartile and ability to physically distance by working remotely. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that 62 percent of earners in the top twenty-fifth quartile were able to work remotely, compared with just 9 percent of those in the bottom twenty-fifth. In stigmatizing those who do not adhere to physical distancing protocols, we risk targeting those with the least personal control over whether they do so.”

At a fundamental level, it would be characterized by social and economic justice. By economic justice, I mean a world where economic systems are geared toward fairness rather than the inequality that currently benefits the well-off few at the expense of the less well-off many. By social justice, I mean a world where no one is unfairly held back by characteristics of identity—whether race, sexual orientation, or gender.

John Hopkins University DEI Office, Diversity Word of the Month

“Privilege is a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups. In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups: White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or own class people, middle-aged people, English-speaking people. Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”

Galea: “To answer every challenge with a call for complete upheaval of all that came before is to be neither serious nor effective as a movement. We may not want to use the language of overthrow when pragmatic reform is called for, just as we may not want to talk about incremental reform when our speech might support something bolder. If we continually cry “revolution” when we really need basic, commonsense reforms, we are liable to drive otherwise sympathetic partners out of our coalition. We also risk being taken less seriously when systemic change really is necessary, with our calls for bold action falling on ears that have long since ceased to listen.”

Great Barrington DeclarationIt claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of “focused protection”, by which those most at risk could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection.

5 Obstacles to a Full Restoration of Public Health Liberal Ideals1. Science/public health have become politicized 2. We have forgotten our roots (free speech and thought, reasoned methodology, pursuit of truth) 3. We have become poor at weighing trade-offs 4. Media feedback loops have become the new peer review 5. We have prioritized the cultivation of influence over the pursuit of truth.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss404_Ronald_Lindsay_2024_02_09.mp3Download MP3In Against the New Politics of Identity, philosopher Ronald A. Lindsay offers a sustained criticism of the far-reaching cultural transformation occurring across much of the West by which individuals are defined primarily by their group identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Driven largely by the political Left, this transformation has led to the wholesale grouping of individuals into oppressed and oppressor classes in both theory and practice. He warns that the push for identity politics on the Left predictably elicits a parallel reaction from the Right, including the Right’s own version of identity politics in the form of Christian nationalism. As Lindsay makes clear, the symbiotic relationship that has formed between these two political poles risks producing even deeper threats to Enlightenment values and Western democracy. If we are to preserve a liberal democracy in which the rights of individuals are respected, he concludes, the dogmas of identity politics must be challenged and refuted. Against the New Politics of Identity offers a principled path for doing so.

Dr. Ronald Lindsay, a philosopher (PhD, Georgetown University) and lawyer (JD, University of Virginia) is the author of The Necessity of Secularism and Future Bioethics. Although his non-fiction works focus on different topics, two threads unite them: Lindsay’s gift for thinking critically about accepted narratives and his strong commitment to individual rights, whether it’s the right to assisted dying, the right to religious freedom, or the right of individuals to be judged on their own merit, as opposed to their group identity. In addition to his books, Lindsay has also written numerous philosophical and legal essays, including the entry on Euthanasia in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics. In his spare time, Lindsay plays baseball—baseball, not softball. The good news is he maintains a batting average near .300; the bad news is his fielding average is not much higher. A native of Boston, Ron Lindsay currently lives in Loudoun County, Virginia with his wife, Debra, where their presence is usually tolerated by their cat. His new book is: Against the New Politics of Identity: How the Left’s Dogmas on Race and Equity Harm Liberal Democracy and Invigorate Christian Nationalism.

Shermer and Lindsay discuss:

• Who is worse, the Left or the Right?
• Critical Race Theory (CRT)
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
• identity politics: identity or politics?
• overt racism vs. systemic racism
• liberalism vs. illiberalism
• What is progressive? What is woke?
• What are the true motives of woke progressive leftists?
• How widespread is the problem of woke ideology?
• standpoint epistemology
• equality vs. equity
• race and class
• cancel culture on the political Left and Right
• Christian nationalism and its agenda
• abortion
• Why do Blacks make less money, own fewer and lower quality homes, work in less prestigious jobs, hold fewer seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, run fewer Fortune 500 companies, etc.?

Show Notes From the Skeptic article “Systemic Racism—Explained”The article, by Mahzarin R. Banaji, Susan T. Fiske & Douglas S. Massey, appeared in Skeptic 27.3.

Race is baked into the history of the U.S. going back to colonial times and continuing through early independence when slavery was quietly written into the nation’s Constitution. Although the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution ended slavery and granted due process, equal protection, and voting rights to the formerly enslaved, efforts to combat systemic racism in the U.S. faltered when Reconstruction collapsed in the disputed election of 1876, which triggered the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

From 1876 to 1900, 90 percent of all African Americans lived in the South and were subject to the dictates of the repressive Jim Crow system; 83 percent lived in poor rural areas, occupying ramshackle dwellings clustered in small settlements in or near the plantations where they worked.

Between 1900 and 1970, millions of African Americans left the rural South in search of better lives in industrializing cities throughout the nation. As a result of this migration, by 1970 nearly half of all African Americans had come to live outside the South, 90 percent in urban areas. It was during this period of Black urbanization that the ghetto emerged as a structural feature of American urbanism, making Black residential segregation into the linchpin of a new system of racial stratification that prevailed throughout the U.S. irrespective of region.

In 1924, the National Association of Real Estate Brokers adopted a code of ethics stating that “a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood”

Redlining through the 1960s…

By 1970, high levels of Black residential segregation were universal throughout metropolitan America. As of 1970, 61 percent of Black Americans living in US metropolitan areas lived under hypersegregation, a circumstance unique to Americans. Although in theory, segregation should have withered away after the Civil Rights Era, it has not.

In 2010, the average index of Black–White segregation remained high and a third of all Black metropolitan residents continued to live in hypersegregated areas. This reality prevails despite the outlawing of racial discrimination in housing (the 1968 Fair Housing Act) and lending (the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act).

In the early 1960s, more than 60 percent of White Americans agreed that Whites have a right to keep Blacks out of their neighborhoods. By the 1980s the percentage had dropped to 13 percent.

Although overt discrimination in housing and lending has clearly declined in response to legislation, covert discrimination continues. Rental and sales agents today are less likely to respond to emails from people with stereotypically Black names or to reply to phone messages left by speakers who “sound Black.” A recent meta-analysis of 16 experimental housing audit studies and 19 lending analyses conducted since 1970 revealed that sharp racial differentials in the number of units recommended by realtors and inspected by clients have persisted and that racial gaps in loan denial rates and borrowing cost have barely changed in 40 years.

Audit studies, conducted across the social and behavioral sciences, include a subset of resume studies in which researchers send the same resume out to apply for jobs, but change just one item: the candidate’s name is Lisa Smith or Lakisha Smith. Then, they wait to see who gets the callback. The bias is clear: employers avoid “Black-sounding” names.

No other group in the history of the U.S. has ever experienced such intense residential segregation in so many areas and over such a long period of time.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss403_Seth_Stephens-Davidowitz_2024_02_06.mp3Download MP3Former Google data scientist and bestselling author of Everybody Lies Seth Stephens-Davidowitz turns his analytic skills to the NBA.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, a lecturer at The Wharton School, and a former Google data scientist. He received a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. He is the author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are and Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life.

Shermer and Stephens-Davidowitz discuss:

• how he used AI to help write this book
• players systematically undervalued in the draft
• Are clutch shooters born or made?
• the percent of 7-footers in the NBA
• why tall NBA players are worse athletes than short NBA players
• the greatest NBA players adjusted for height
• names as proxies for success (or not)
• why some countries produce so many more NBA players than others
• who would be the best NBA player of all time if every player were the same height
• What percent genetic is basketball talent? And how does this compare to other sports?
• What advantages do NBA player fathers pass on to their sons?
• How much do NBA coaches matter and what do they do?
• Will any time win 11 NBA titles like Bill Russell’s Celtics did?
• why no one hits .400 in baseball any more
• Six sigma in sports and life
• nature/nurture in sports and life
• In a population of 8 billion today compared to centuries past, where are all the Mozarts, Beethovens, Da Vincis, Newtons, Darwins, etc.?
• the Moneyball revolution in sports
• how to apply the moneyball system in life
• What makes people happy?
• How much do good looks matter?
• How much does height and competent faces influence elections?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss402_Jessica_Schleider_2024_02_03.mp3Download MP3If you’ve ever wanted mental health support but haven’t been able to get it, you are not alone.

In fact, you’re part of the more than 50% of adults and more than 75% of young people worldwide with unmet psychological needs. Maybe you’ve faced months-long waiting lists, or you’re not sure if your problems are ‘bad enough’ to merit treatment? Maybe you tried therapy but stopped due to costs or time constraints? Perhaps you just don’t know where to start looking? The fact is, there are infinite reasons why mental health treatment is hard to get. There’s an urgent need for new ideas and pathways to help people heal.

Little Treatments, Big Effects integrates cutting-edge psychological science, lived experience narratives and practical self-help activities to introduce a new type of therapeutic experience to audiences worldwide: single-session interventions. Its chapters unpack why systemic change in mental healthcare is necessary; the science behind how single-session interventions make it possible; how others have created ‘meaningful moments’ in their recovery journeys (and how you can, too); and how single-session interventions could transform the mental healthcare system into one that’s accessible to all.

Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D. is an American psychologist, author, and an associate professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University. She is the lab director of the Lab for Scalable Mental Health. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University and her Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology at Yale School of Medicine. She has received numerous scientific awards for her work in this area and her work is frequently featured in major media outlets (Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Washington Post). In 2020, she was selected as one of Forbes Magazine’s ‘30 Under 30’ in Healthcare. She has developed six evidence-based, single-session mental health programmes, which have served more than 40,000 people to date. She is the author of The Growth Mindset Workbook for Teens and co-editor of the Oxford Guide to Brief and Low Intensity Interventions for Children and Young People. Her new book is Little Treatments, Big Effects: How to Build Meaningful Moments That Can Transform Your Mental Health.

Shermer and Schleider discuss:

• her own experience with mental illness in an eating disorder
• 80% of people meet criteria for a mental illness at some point in their life
• What is the goal of therapy?
• navigating therapy modalities, access, payments, insurance, etc
• What prevents people from getting the mental health help they need?
• a brief history of asylums, institutions, deinstitutionalization and othering of mental healthcare
• disease model of mental illness
• What are outcome measures to test different therapies? “Works”?
• traditional therapy vs. single-session interventions
• growth mindset: personality, academic performance and personal outcomes can be changed if we treat setbacks as opportunities to grow and improve
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)
• You don’t have to feel ready for recovery to take steps towards it.
• mental health issues that can be addressed through single session interventions: eating disorders, anxiety disorders, depression, suicidality, ADHD, substance/alcohol use disorder, OCD, self-injury
• difference between goals and values (wellness/health, family, compassion/helping, wisdom/education, relationships/kinship, joy/pleasure, spirituality/religion, perseverance, independence, community
• action brings change.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss401_Katherine_Brodsky_2024_01_10.mp3Download MP3As a society we are self-censoring at record rates. Say the wrong thing at the wrong moment to the wrong person and the consequences can be dire. Think that everyone should be treated equally regardless of race? You’re a racist who needs to be kicked out of the online forum that you started. Believe there are biological differences between men and women? You’re a sexist who should be fired with cause. Argue that people should be able to speak freely within the bounds of the law? You’re a fascist who should be removed from your position of authority. When the truth is no defense and nuance is seen as an attack, self-censorship is a rational choice. Yet, our silence comes with a price. When we are too fearful to speak openly and honestly, we deprive ourselves of the ability to build genuine relationships, we yield all cultural and political power to those with opposing views, and we lose our ability to challenge ideas or change minds, even our own.

In No Apologies, Katherine Brodsky argues that it’s time for principled individuals to hit the unmute button and resist the authoritarians among us who name, shame, and punish. Recognizing that speaking authentically is easier said than done, she spent two years researching and interviewing those who have been subjected to public harassment and abuse for daring to transgress the new orthodoxy or criticize a new taboo. While she found that some of these individuals navigated the outrage mob better than others, and some suffered worse personal and professional effects than others, all of the individuals with whom she spoke remain unapologetic over their choice to express themselves authentically. In sharing their stories, which span the arts, education, journalism, and science, Brodsky uncovers lessons for all of us in the silenced majority to push back against the dangerous illiberalism of the vocal minority that tolerates no dissent— and to find and free our own voices.

Katherine Brodsky is a journalist, author, essayist and commentator who has been taking an especially keen interest in emerging technologies and their impact on society. She has contributed to publications such as Variety, the Washington Post, WIRED, The Guardian, Esquire, Newsweek, Mashable, and many others. Over the years she has interviewed a diverse range of intriguing personalities including numerous Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Pulitzer, and Nobel Prize winners and nominees—including the Dalai Lama.

Shermer and Brodsky discuss:

• What it’s like growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union and Israel
• Why the Jews
• Why liberals (or progressives) no longer defend free speech
• Cancel culture: data and anecdotes
• Is Cancel Culture an imagined moral panic?
• Cancel Culture on the political Left
• Cancel Culture on the political Right
• Social media and Cancel Culture
• Free speech law vs. free speech norms
• Pluralistic Ignorance and the spiral of silence
• Solutions to cancel culture
• Identity politics
• Cancel culture, witch crazes, and virtue signaling
• Free speech, hate speech and slippery slopes
• How to stand up to cancel culture.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss400_Brian_Klaas_2024_01_03.mp3Download MP3If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind?

In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas dives deeply into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people’s neat and tidy storybook version of reality. The book’s argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering truth: but for a few small changes, our lives—and our societies—could be radically different.

Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple’s vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents?

Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen—all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.

Brian Klaas grew up in Minnesota, earned his DPhil at Oxford, and is now a professor of global politics at University College London. He is a regular contributor for The Washington Post and The Atlantic, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and frequent guest on national television. Klaas has conducted field research across the globe, interviewing despots, CEOs, torture victims, dissidents, cult leaders, criminals, and everyday power abusers. He has also advised major politicians and organizations including NATO, the European Union, and Amnesty International. His previous book, for which he appears on this podcast, was Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us. His new book is Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters. You can find him at BrianPKlaas.com and on X @brianklaas.

Shermer and Klaas discuss:

• contingency and necessity/convergence
• chance and randomness
• complexity and chaos theory
• Jorge Luis Borges “The Garden of Forking Paths”
• self-organized criticality
• limits of probability in a complex, ever-changing world
• frequency- vs. belief-type probability
• ceteris paribus, or “all else being equal” but things are never equal
• economic forecasting
• free will, determinism, and compatibilism
• Holy Grail of Causality
• Easy Problem of Social Research and the Hard Problem of Social Research
• Was the original theory wrong, or did the world change?
• When Clinton lost, Silver pointed to his model as a defense: 71.4 percent isn’t 100 percent! There was nearly a 30 percent chance of Clinton losing in the model, so the model wasn’t wrong—it was just something that would happen nearly a third of the time!
• Special Order 191 and the turning point of the Civil War
• Implicit in the baby Hitler thought experiment is the idea that without Hitler the Nazis wouldn’t rise to power in Germany, World War II wouldn’t happen, and the Holocaust would be avoided. It therefore assumes that Hitler was the sole, or at least the crucial, cause of those events. Many historians would take issue with that viewpoint, arguing that those cataclysms were all but inevitable. Hitler might have affected some outcomes, they’d say, but not the overall trajectory of events. The Nazis, the war, and the genocide were due to larger factors than just one man.
• weak-link problem
• complex world defined by tipping points, feedback loops, increasing returns, lock-in, emergence, and self-organized criticality
• QWERTY and path dependency, Betamax vs. VHS, cassette v. CD v. streaming.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss399_Chris_Anderson_2024_01_17.mp3Download MP3As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world’s boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. Inspired by them, he believes that it’s within our grasp to turn outrage back into optimism. It all comes down to reimagining one of the most fundamental human virtues: generosity. What if generosity could become infectious generosity? Consider:

• how a London barber began offering haircuts to people experiencing homelessness—and catalyzed a movement
• how two anonymous donors gave $10,000 each to two hundred strangers and discovered that most recipients wanted to “pay it forward” with their own generous acts
• how TED itself transformed from a niche annual summit into a global beacon of ideas by giving away talks online, allowing millions access to free learning.

In telling these inspiring stories, Anderson has given us “the first page-turner ever written about human generosity” (Elizabeth Dunn). More important, he offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts—whether gifts of money, time, talent, connection, or kindness—and to prime them, thanks to the Internet, to have self-replicating, even world-changing, impact.

Chris Anderson has been the curator of TED since 2001. His TED mantra—“ideas worth spreading”—continues to blossom on an international scale. He lives in New York City and London but was born in a remote village in Pakistan and spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, and founded Future Publishing that focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design. He then built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN, publishing some 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people. This success allowed Chris’s nonprofit organization to acquire the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California. He expanded the conference’s remit to cover all topics, and now has TED Fellows, the TED Prize, TEDx events, and the TED-Ed program offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers. Astonishingly, TED talks have been translated into 100 languages and garner over 1 billion views a year. His new book is Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading.

Shermer and Anderson discuss:

• how his life turned out (genes, environment, luck)
• what makes TED successful while other platforms failed or stalled
• TED talks go public for free vs. paying customers
• power laws and giving: do 10% donate 90%?
• Amanda Parker gave away her music and asked people to pay: survival bias—how many people have tried this and failed?
• blogs, podcast, Substack … saturation markets
• changing business landscape of charging vs. giving away
• What makes things infectious?
• What is generosity? Idea vs. character trait—virtue ethics
• altruism and reciprocal altruism, reputation and self-reputation
• religion and morality: do we need an “eye in the sky” to be good?
• Can people be good without God?
• philanthropy: 2700 billionaires have more wealth than 120 poorest countries combined
• giving & philanthropy seems like a rich-person’s game. How can average people participate?
• incentivizing giving as a selfish act: why “pay it forward”?
• public vs. private solutions to social problems
• How can one person make a difference?
• The Mystery Experiment
• Ndugu Effect
• donor fatigue
• Giving What We Can.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss398_Paul_Halpern_2024_01_02.mp3Download MP3Our books, our movies—our imaginations—are obsessed with extra dimensions, alternate timelines, and the sense that all we see might not be all there is. In short, we can’t stop thinking about the multiverse. As it turns out, physicists are similarly captivated.

In The Allure of the Multiverse, physicist Paul Halpern tells the epic story of how science became besotted with the multiverse, and the controversies that ensued. The questions that brought scientists to this point are big and deep: Is reality such that anything can happen, must happen? How does quantum mechanics “choose” the outcomes of its apparently random processes? And why is the universe habitable? Each question quickly leads to the multiverse. Drawing on centuries of disputation and deep vision, from luminaries like Nietzsche, Einstein, and the creators of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Halpern reveals the multiplicity of multiverses that scientists have imagined to make sense of our reality. Whether we live in one of many different possible universes, or simply the only one there is, might never be certain. But Halpern shows one thing for sure: how stimulating it can be to try to find out.

Dr. Paul Halpern is the author of 18 popular science books, exploring the subjects of space, time, higher dimensions, dark energy, dark matter, exoplanets, particle physics, and cosmology. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an Athenaeum Literary Award, he has contributed to Nature, Physics Today, Aeon, NOVA’s “The Nature of Reality” physics blog, and Forbes “Starts with a Bang!” He has appeared on numerous radio and television shows including “Future Quest,” “Science Friday,” “Radio Times,” “Coast to Coast AM,” “The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special,” and C-SPAN’s “BookTV.” He appeared previously on the show for his book Synchronicity: The Epic Quest to Understand the Quantum Nature of Cause and Effect. His new book, The Allure of the Multiverse, describes the controversial history of higher dimensional and parallel universe schemes in science and culture. More information can be found at: allureofthemultiverse.com

Shermer and Halpern discuss:

• universe and multiverse meaning
• Is the multiverse science, metaphysics, or faith?
• theists claim the “multiverse” is just handwaving around the God answer
• types of multiverses
• many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?
• inflationary cosmology and eternal inflation
• Darwinian cosmology
• infinity and eternity
• multiple dimensions and the multiverse
• string theory and the multiverse
• cyclical universes and multiverses (the Big Bounce)
• Anthropic Principle (weak, strong, participatory)
• time travel and the multiverse
• sliding doors, contingency, and the multiverse.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss397_Michael_Shellenberger_2023_12_02.mp3Download MP3Michael Shellenberger explains the role of government agencies in social media censorship, his work on the Twitter files, and the differences between independent and mainstream journalism. PLUS: how to deal with the opioid epidemic, what we can do about homelessness, his take on January 6, George Floyd, UFOs and UAPs, and more. Recorded live in Santa Barbara, CA at the Skeptics Society 2023 conference.

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Shermer and McIntyre discuss: default to truth theory • RFK Jr. • whether reason evolved for veridical perception or group identity? • How do we know what is true and what to believe? • worst case scenarios if Donald Trump wins in 2024 • trans issues, race issues, GMOs, nuclear power, climate doomsdayism • What went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic? • disinformation about masks, vaccines • social media and disinformation.

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Shermer and Tabash discuss: the history of the relationship between church and state • the founding framers of the U.S. Constitution and their arguments for separating church and state • Madison and Jefferson • how most of the 13 colonies had government-sanctioned religions and religious tests for office • the Constitutional Convention and the First Amendment • the push by some Republicans to hold a new Constitutional Convention and redesign the entire U.S. Constitution • the religious beliefs and attitudes of…

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss371_Nancy_Segal_2023_07_20.mp3Download MP3This episode is a conversation based Nancy Segal’s two new books The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive and Gay Fathers, Twin Sons: the Citzenship Case that Captured the World.

Shermer and Segal discuss:

• her historical interest in twins research and behavior genetics
• the many different types of twins and family arrangements
• twins separated accidentally (switched with an unrelated infant, switched with another twin)
• twins separated intentionally
• twins reunited
• a brief history of twins research
• Josef Mengele and his twins research
• Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart
• the gay fathers and twin sons story
• immigration and naturalization law related to IVF, twins, gay couples, etc.
• abortion
• eugenics and the Nobel Prize sperm bank
• the meaning of “heritability”
• the relative role of nature and nurture in how lives turn out, and
• the “nonshared environment.”

Nancy L. Segal, PhD, is a Psychology Professor, and Director and Founder of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton. She has authored over 300 scholarly articles and eight books. Her 2012 book, Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study, won the American Psychological Association’s William James Book Award. Her recent work, Deliberately Divided: Inside the Controversial Study of Twins and Triplets Adopted Apart, was the focus of a July 2022 BBC-TV documentary. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly. She has appeared on national and international televised programs, including the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, the Today Show and the BBC. She is also the author of The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive, an annotated collection of photographs taken at the Holocaust twins’ 40th anniversary reunion and hearing on Josef Mengele’s war crimes. Her other books include Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior, Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins, Someone Else’s Twin: The True Story of Babies Switched at Birth, Twin Mythconceptions: False Beliefs, Fables, and Facts About Twins, and Accidental Brothers: The Story of Twins Exchanged at Birth and the Power of Nature and Nurture. Segal lives and works in southern California.

About the BookThe January 2018 headline story in the Los Angeles Times was riveting. Andrew from the United States and Elad Dvash-Banks from Israel married in Canada in 2010 when gay couples could not marry in these countries. The couple conceived fraternal twins, Aiden and Ethan, with a Canadian surrogate by means of egg and sperm donation. The two boys were born just four minutes apart. Aiden was conceived with a donated egg and Andrew’s sperm cell, and Ethan was conceived with a donated egg (from the same woman) and Elad’s sperm cell.

Andrew and Elad wished to raise their children in the United States, but when they arrived at the American Consulate in Toronto to apply for citizenship, a staff member fired off a series of “shocking” and humiliating questions, and informed the couple of her authority to require a DNA test to determine each parents’ relatedness to each twin—she warned that without these tests neither twin would be granted U.S. citizenship. Andrew and Elad knew which twin each had fathered and had planned on keeping this information confidential. They knew this because DNA analyses had already been performed, but the consulate insisted that these costly tests be repeated using their designated laboratory.

Having no alternative, DNA testing was arranged, and results submitted to the consulate. Soon, two envelopes arrived at their home, bearing both welcome and dreaded news: United States citizenship was offered to Aiden, whose father was a U.S. citizen, but not to Ethan, whose father was Israeli. And, thus, their ground-breaking legal journey began. The couple’s high-profile lawsuit nearly reached the U.S. Supreme Court, capturing worldwide attention along the way.

Nancy Segal brings the story to life through firsthand accounts of each father’s life history and analysis of the legal intricacies that threatened to deny U.S. citizenship to one of their twin sons.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss370_Avi_Loeb_2023_08_24.mp3Download MP3Did Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb discover the remnants of an interstellar meteor in the form of spherules on the ocean floor? Could they be of alien origin?

In today’s special edition of The Michael Shermer Show the guest, Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb announces that he has discovered material from a large interstellar object from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near Papua New Guinea in an expedition he led over the summer. The object, which he labels IM1—Interstellar Meteor 1—collided with Earth nearly a decade ago and was tracked by U.S. government satellites, which gave Loeb and his team coordinates of where to look (more on this below). Most of the meteor burned up in the atmosphere but tiny spherules remained on the ocean bottom, which Loeb retrieved and had analyzed in labs at Harvard, UC Berkeley, and the Broker Corporation. These spherules are tiny—smaller than a grain of sand—and there are literally trillions of them around the world of both terrestrial and extraterrestrial origin, so whether or not these particular spherules are Interstellar in origin remains to be seen, despite Loeb’s confidence that they are. Here is what he announced today in a press release:

The Interstellar Expedition of June 2023–led by the expedition’s Chief Scientist, Harvard University Astrophysicist Avi Loeb and coordinated by Expedition Leader Rob McCallum of EYOS Expeditions retrieved hundreds of metallic spheres thought to be unmatched to any existing alloys in our solar system from the seafloor in the Pacific Ocean near Papua New Guinea. Early analysis shows that some spherules from the meteor path contain extremely high abundances of Beryllium, Lanthanum and Uranium, labeled as a never-seen-before “BeLaU” composition. These spherules also exhibit iron isotope ratios unlike those found on Earth, the Moon and Mars, altogether implying an interstellar origin. The loss of volatile elements is consistent with IM1’s airburst in the Earth’s atmosphere. “The “BeLaU” composition is tantalizingly different by factors of hundreds from solar system materials, with beryllium production through spallation of heavier nuclei by cosmic-rays flagging interstellar travel,” says Avi Loeb.

The press release of August 29, 2023 was timed with the publication date of Dr. Loeb’s new book, Interstellar, whose subtitle hints at the scientist’s larger ambitions: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars.

Dr. Loeb’s co-authored paper has not been peer reviewed. In fact, none of the world’s leading experts on spherules from space have even seen any of Dr. Loeb’s evidence. So in preparation for this episode, I contacted Peter Brown, an astronomer at Western University, Ontario, who specializes in the physics of meteors, and he directed me to the five leading experts in the world on spherules. These include: George Flynn, SUNY, Plattsburgh; Don Brownlee, University of Washington; John Bradley, University of Hawaii; Michael Zolensky, NASA; and Matthew Genge, Imperial College, London. I also consulted Steven Desch, from Arizona State University, as he has been quoted elsewhere as a critic of Avi Loeb’s research. All expressed their skepticism about Dr. Loeb’s findings, which I read on air to Avi to get his response (see the show notes below). Listen to the experts and Dr. Loeb’s response to their skepticism in this episode. (Note: Steven Desch’s initial statement, included in the show notes, was so negative that I chose not to read it on air, but include it here for full disclosure of what he thinks about this research. I also included Dr. Desch’s additional comments on why many scientists are skeptical of the U.S. government data on the meteor’s trajectory and impact site.)

I should note that I am a member of the Galileo Project team, which organized this expedition, and I consider Avi a friend and colleague who always welcomes my skepticism in our weekly team meetings. To that end let me emphasize that he is not claiming to have discovered alien technology, only the remnants of an interstellar object. Unfortunately, the media coverage surrounding the Galileo Project in general and this expedition in particular is only interested in whether or not we have made contact with ET. We have not, and Avi is not claiming that we have. But here is an example, which I tweeted out recently, of what Avi is claiming and what the media reports:

No matter the scientific find is, the media reports it as aliens, aliens, and aliens. Alas.

My own view is that aliens are very likely out there somewhere—given the astronomical numbers of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars, each of which has planets it seems highly unlikely that we’re alone in the cosmos—but that they have very likely not come here in any shape or form—nonhuman biologics or extraterrestrial metalogics (my own neologism echoing government whistleblower David Grusch’s ridiculous description of alien pilots as “nonhuman biologics” in his Congressional testimony). The universe is vast and consists of mostly empty space. The odds are very long indeed that anyone could find us, much less leave traces for us to evaluate. But in keeping with Cromwell’s Rule in Bayesian reasoning (never assign a 0 or 1 probability to anything because, as Oliver Cromwell famously said, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ you might be mistaken”), we should keep an open mind and keep looking. That is why I support the SETI program and am on the Galileo Project team. The odds are long but the payoff would be spectacular if we ever did discover extraterrestrial intelligence or the technological artifacts of an extraterrestrial civilization.

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University, the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, the founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, and the current director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He also heads the Galileo Project, chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and is former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. Author of eight books and more than a thousand scientific papers, Loeb is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2012, Time selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

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This episode is sponsored by Brilliant:

Show NotesPeter Brown, Western University, Ontario, gave me the names of the top experts in the world on spherules (tiny fragments of meteors that strike earth and/or industrial debris from manufacturing), whom I queried about Avi Blum’s findings. Here are their responses:

Michael Zolensky, NASA

Yes, I know all about this, but I would rather withhold any question or statement until I see what he actually has. I’m sure you understand.

Matthew Genge, Imperial College, London

Sure… I’d be interested to see the paper too. I am guessing it won’t be in Science or Nature. However, I do think pushing the envelope is necessary as a scientist, as is being provocative, but at the end of the day, the more dramatic the conclusion, the stronger the evidence has to be. However, I haven’t seen the data, thus I can’t give a proper opinion, only an impression on what has been reported in the media.

My question to Avi Loeb would be this:

“The only evidence universally accepted by scientists for an origin beyond our solar system is an isotopic composition significantly outside the range of materials within our solar system. What isotopes have you analysed in the materials you have recovered? What is their range as a ratio to maximum solar system values?”

I suspect his answer will be to dismiss the requirement and instead to point to dynamic evidence (e.g. entry velocity from meteor observations). If he tries to claim this add:

“Considering radar observations are highly uncertain how can you be certain that this meteor was interstellar? Many meteor scientists claim there still has never been an unequivocal interstellar meteor.”

It might, however, be easier to put me on the same podcast with him so we can talk. I even agree with him on some things…for example, the compositions I’ve seen reported seem to be artificial, I agree they are not interplanetary dust from our solar system, however, I would suggest they are much more likely to be terrestrial and anthropogenic. I also have some suggestions by which he might be able to distinguish between terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials.

Finally:

“If you heat Ti-rich metal in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, it reacts to form titanium oxides. It is difficult to say, since the results havent yet been published, but if your particles are made of titanium-rich metal, then they haven’t experienced atmospheric entry.”

I do, however, agree with Avi. If an alien civilization has ever visited Earth, now or in the distant past, they may have left tiny pieces of evidence on our planet in the form of droplets formed by their atmospheric entry. The evidence, however, must be exceedingly strong. For example, several years ago we found iron-manganese oxide spherules in 100-million year old sea floor rocks, and it crossed our minds that these materials are used in spacecraft alloys, however, it turned out that ordinary interplanetary dust is transformed during its time on the seafloor by replacement of nickel by manganese. Geology is a complicated business since we still dont know all the processes that operate in the natural environment.

George Flynn, SUNY, Plattsburgh

Cosmic spherules have been recovered from the ocean floor since the Challenger Expedition in the 19th century. Since the Challenger Expedition recovered these spherules they have also been recovered from lakes, and even the Polar Ices. A good summary of the history is given in this paper. So I guess the most important question is how do the spherules Loeb recovered differ from the ones routinely collected and identified over the past century and a half, and what specific characteristic(s) distinguish them from the spherules of likely Solar System origin that have been studied in detail over that time.

I think the important point is that extraterrestrial metallic spheres have been collected from the seafloor in numerous locations in the Pacific Ocean (and other places around the world) since the 1880s. Finding these spherules in a location where Loeb expects ablation debris from a specific object does not demonstrate they are from that object. He should expect to find these spheres pretty much everywhere. So, to claim they are interstellar he must demonstrate that there is some specific feature that indicates they are not ablation products from Solar System meteors that enter the atmosphere all the time.

Don Brownlee, University of Washington

If something is found from outside the solar system, it will have a different isotopic composition than Earthly materials. This property has been used to identify thousands of small presolar grains in meteorites and interplanetary dust. These grains are usually a micron or smaller and they formed around other stars but were preserved inside the asteroids that generate meteorites. With the right equipment, these rare grains can be proven to have formed around other stars. It should be simple to ID interstellar material and it is done routinely for the rare presolar grains. As Carl Sagan famously said – extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Isotopic composition or age older than the Sun would be proof.

My thoughts are that most interstellar solids entering the solar system in sizes of microns to kilometers were probably made during the peak of star formation in the Galaxy and are over 10 billion years old. These objects have typically spent billions of years in interstellar space at near zero temperature- no heat for Capt. Kirk or semiconductors. The first interstellar solids entering the solar system on unbound orbits were found by dust detectors on the Ulysses and Galileo spacecraft.

If an object is ET made, it surely will not be made of transparent aluminum or any other fantasy material. It would be made of materials that could be used to make spacecraft. The materials that we use to make spacecraft are exotic materials that never would be expect to be found in natural planetary materials, Such exotics are metallic Al, metallic Ti, carbon fiber, kapton sheet with metal coating, gold connectors, high strength steel, teflon, copper wire, epoxy and a vast array of engineered materials that would never have existed without human or ET production.

John Bradley, University of Hawaii

Dismay does not begin to describe my sentiments about Loeb’s scientific shenanigans. To assert that cosmic spherules (i.e., melted micrometeorites) that litter the seafloor are parts of an alien spacecraft defies common sense, unless of course alien spacecraft are actually made of rocks. This sort of nonsense may explain why so many in the public at large harbor an abiding antipathy towards science. Academic freedom, like (past) Presidential powers, is not without its limits.

Steven Desch, Arizona State

I have sparred with Loeb on matters from ‘Oumuamua, to the Chicxulub impactor, and now to the 2014-01-08 bolide. Regarding the interstellar meteor, I have engaged in my own research, much of which I presented at the June 2023 Asteroids, Comets & Meteors conference in Flagstaff. Peter Brown of University of Western Ontario also presented his research as well. Below I summarize the science case as it stands now.

Everyone agrees that if the meteor entered at the speed (45 km/s) and vector reported in the CNEOS database, it would be interstellar; but no scientist trusts those numbers, and it’s VERY likely this meteor came from our solar system.

• Previous attempts to verify the CNEOS database numbers (using those also observed from the ground) shows they are wildly in error in about 1/3 of cases; sometimes the reported vectors are 90 degrees off. (Devilleux et al. )
• Peter Brown demonstrated that the uncertainties in speeds for high-speed meteors are especially large; for this one they’re probably ±20 km/s. The 2014-01-08 bolide probably came in at 25 km/s (which would be more consistent with other aspects of its light curve), and therefore wasn’t interstellar. (Brown et al. 2023 )
• I’m working with Maria Hajdukova in Slovakia, who is an expert on meteors, and in work in preparation, they show that all the fast meteors in the CNEOS database have one velocity component that’s really funky (i.e., 45 km/s is probably measurement error).

There’s nothing obviously unnatural about this bolide.

Assuming anyway the 2014-01-08 bolide was moving at 45 km/s, Siraj & Loeb (2022, ApJ) have implied it couldn’t have been a natural material because it broke up at a ram pressure of 200–250 MPa, whereas they cite a paper and claim iron meteorites can’t withstand pressures greater than 50 MPa. In fact they completely misquoted the papers they cite, which show iron meteorites can withstand pressures up to 700 MPa.

If the meteor did come in at 45 km/s, nothing would have survived.

• In a preprint on arXiv, Tillinghast-Raby (a poor student), Loeb & Siraj claim that 10% of the meteor would have survived entry, but they falsely assumed the bolide exploded with every piece moving outward at 41 km/s (so that backward-moving material sees its forward motion almost completley cancelled). Actually, meteors disintegrate and all that material keeps moving forward at 45 km/s.
• The formulas for how much material survives are in the meteor literature and are pretty well established once you define the ‘ablation parameter’. For any non-exotic material, < 0.0001% of this meteor would have survived if it were moving at 45 km/s. We’re talking milligrams.

There is no way to pin down the location of the material to better than tens of square kilometers.

• In a preprint on arXiv, Siraj & Loeb tried to pin down the location using seismometry, but this preprint has many mathematical errors (a figure even shows the bolide moving east to west, instead of west to east!), and tries to attribute a signal to the bolide that is probably the signal of a passing truck or something on the island. It’s a hot mess. The uncertainty in where it fell is > 10 km.
• In my ACM talk, we showed that in the minutes it takes spherules to sink to the ocean floor, the currents there would have distributed spherules across many kilometers east-to-west.

At no point did Loeb seem to recognize that the ocean floor is littered with metallic spherules from a variety of sources.

• Micrometeorites have been purposefully collected from the seafloor using magnets for at least 50 years (ask Don Brownlee, PI of the Stardust mission), and were recognized for almost a century before that. Loeb cited NONE of this literature. As my oceanography colleague Hilairy Hartnett puts it, there are “squillions” of such spherules almost anywhere you can put a magnet on the seafloor.
• Metallic spherules come from micrometeorites, but also from volcanic activity, and human industrial processes. Loeb presented no plan ahead of time for how he would distinguish these.
• I’m not an expert on what variety of materials can be found on the seafloor, but I understand there are many industrial byproducts, and all of these would have to be ruled out to make any claims at all.

About the BookIn the New York Times bestseller Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb, the longest serving Chair of Harvard’s Astronomy Department, presented a theory that shook the scientific community: our solar system, Loeb claimed, had likely been visited by a piece of advanced alien technology from a distant star. This provocative and persuasive argument opened millions of minds internationally to the vast possibilities of our universe and the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. But a crucial question remained: now that we are aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life, what do we do next? How do we prepare ourselves for interaction with interstellar extraterrestrial civilization? How can our species become interstellar?

Now Loeb tackles these questions in a revelatory, powerful call to arms that reimagines the idea of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Dismantling our science-fiction fueled visions of a human and alien life encounter, Interstellar provides a realistic and practical blueprint for how such an interaction might actually occur, resetting our cultural understanding and expectation of what it means to identify an extraterrestrial object. From awe-inspiring searches for extraterrestrial technology, to the heated debate of the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Loeb provides a thrilling, front-row view of the monumental progress in science and technology currently preparing us for contact. He also lays out the profound implications of becoming—or not becoming—interstellar; in an urgent, eloquent appeal for more proactive engagement with the world beyond ours, he powerfully contends why we must seek out other life forms, and in the process, choose who and what we are within the universe.

Combining cutting edge science, physics, and philosophy, Interstellar revolutionizes the approach to our search for extraterrestrial life and our preparation for its discovery. In this eye-opening, necessary look at our future, Avi Loeb artfully and expertly raises some of the most important questions facing us as humans, and proves, once again, that scientific curiosity is the key to our survival.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss369_Ed_Larson_2023_07_11.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Larson discuss:

• Was America founded in 1619 or 1776?
• What is/was an “American”?
• Founding Fathers attitudes toward slavery: John/Abigail Adams, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine
• What was the justification of slavery?
• constitutional convention and slavery compromises
• U.S. Constitution and slavery
• Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
• Atlantic slave trade
• Fugitive Slave Act and Clause
• Native Americans
• monogenism vs. polygenism (did Blacks descend from Adam and Eve or as a separate species
• slavery abolition
• Quakers push for abolition
• Three-fifths Compromise
• The Dread Scott Decision and the Civil War
• Abraham Lincoln and his rational argument for ending slavery
• the future of race relations in America.

Edward J. Larson is the author of many acclaimed works in American history, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning history of the Scopes Trial, Summer for the Gods. He also authored Franklin and Washington: The Founding Partnership, The Return of George Washington 1783-1789, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800—America’s First Presidential Campaign, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science, To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration, and the textbook Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory. He is University Professor of History and Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University, and lives with his family near Los Angeles.

About the BookNew attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? Leaders of the founding who called for American liberty are scrutinized for enslaving Black people themselves: George Washington consistently refused to recognize the freedom of those who escaped his Mount Vernon plantation. And we have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the Revolutionary protests, the war, and the debates over slavery and freedom that followed.

We now have that history in Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward J. Larson’s insightful synthesis of the founding. With slavery thriving in Britain’s Caribbean empire and practiced in all of the American colonies, the independence movement’s calls for liberty proved narrow, though some Black observers and others made their full implications clear. In the war, both sides employed strategies to draw needed support from free and enslaved Blacks, whose responses varied by local conditions. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, a widening sectional divide shaped the fateful compromises over slavery that would prove disastrous in the coming decades. Larson’s narrative delivers poignant moments that deepen our understanding: we witness New York’s tumultuous welcome of Washington as liberator through the eyes of Daniel Payne, a Black man who had escaped enslavement at Mount Vernon two years before. Indeed, throughout Larson’s brilliant history it is the voices of Black Americans that prove the most convincing of all on the urgency of liberty.

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Shermer and Curran discuss: Curran’s own perfectionism and how that led him to research perfection • What is perfection? Is he measuring perfection or something else? • The Big Five Personality Scale (OCEAN) and where perfection falls in it • goals, meritocracy, high standards, and conscientiousness • self-oriented vs. other-oriented vs. socially prescribed perfectionism • Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong • origins of perfectionism • consequences of perfectionism • social media • income inequality, UBI, GDP, economics • helicopter…

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Shermer and Lomborg discuss: perfect solutions vs. practical trade-offs • benefit-cost analysis • time horizons and discounting the future • the value of a statistical life • saving the environment, the poor, the diseased • the millennium development goals • the sustainable development goals • tuberculosis • education • maternal and newborn health • agricultural R&D (more and cheaper food) • malaria • land tenure security • nutrition • chronic diseases • childhood immunization • corruption • highly skilled migration.

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Shermer, Simons, and Chabris discuss: • How rational vs. irrational are humans? (Daniel Kahneman vs. Gerd Gingerenzer) • Truth Default Theory, or Truth Bias • deception vs. deception detection • social proof and the influence of others on our beliefs • cults • Bernie Madoff • Harvey Weinstein • Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos • Nigerian spam scam • cheating in chess • habits of thought that can be exploited • information hooks we find especially enticing instead of triggering skepticism • scientific fraud and the replication crisis • how to prevent from being a victim of fraud or a con.

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Shermer and Saad discuss: operational definitions of the “good life,” “happiness,” and “well being” • emotions • eudaimonia (the pursuit of meaning) versus hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure) • genetics and heritability • cultural components • the Big Five (OCEAN) • marriage (mate selection) • health • exercise and stress reduction • religion • anti-fragility • a playful outlook and curiosity • variety (the “spice of life”) • what the ancient Greeks got right about living the good life • how failure may actually be a key to more happiness • persistence, grit, and risk taking • regret and the dark side of consumption and addictions.

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Shermer and Rufo discuss: race as America’s original sin • civil rights movement then and now • liberalism vs. illiberalism • equality vs. equity • overt racism vs. systemic racism • intellectual origins of the cultural revolution: Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, Derrick Bell, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton • Black Lives Matter origins in the Black Liberation Army and the Black Panthers • critical race theory (CRT) • diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and more…

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Shermer and Eig discuss: how to write biography • the history of the King family going back to slavery, Jim Crow, etc. • the influence of King Sr. on Martin’s intellectual and emotional development and the Ebenezer Baptist Church • King’s early experience with racism in the south • King’s religious beliefs and the influence of his faith on his civil rights activism • the influence of Gandhi and Reinhold Niebuhr on King’s strategic activism and deep belief in nonviolence • King’s politics • Malcolm X • Native Americans • gay rights • accusations of plagiarism, and more…

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Shermer and Özkirimli discuss: identity politics, cancel culture • woke, TERF, anti-fragility, anti-racism • diversity, equity, and inclusion • Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo • Loretta Ross, rape, retributive vs. restorative justice • Woman’s March • leftism, progressivism, democratic socialism, liberalism, classical liberalism, libertarianism, conservatism, populism, nationalism, white nationalism, authoritarianism, tyranny • moral panics • MAGA, Trump • victimhood • safetyism • trigger warnings, safe spaces, microaggressions • What Went Wrong?

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Shermer and Mandel discuss: the problem of woke ideology • anecdotes vs. data about woke actions and intentions • sex and gender • woke medicine • transgender affirming care • government vs. private responses to social movements and ideas • Trump, DeSantis, Liz Cheney, the Lincoln Project, and other GOP issues • abortion: pro-Choice or pro-Life? • support for children: government or private? • What is “the left” and how does it differ from liberalism, classical liberalism, and libertarianism? • What are the true motives of woke progressive leftists?

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Hood, Price, and Shermer discuss: why we age and die • sickcare vs. healthcare • the 10 most popular drugs in the U.S. work for only about 10% of treated people • chronological age ≠ biological age • life expectancy, life span, longevity, and healthspan • why eliminating all cancers would only increase average life span by 3 years • genome vs. phenome • gut biome • optimizing brain function • brain plasticity • sleep, nutrition, exercise • Alzheimer’s • AI and quantum computing for better health.

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Shermer and Shellenberger discuss: the original article in Debrief • the authors Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal • why this story was not covered by the New York Times or the Washington Post • whistleblower David Grusch and his claim that the U.S. government and its allies have in their possession “intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin,” along with the dead alien pilots • claims of the many types of alien ships and alien beings, and that the aliens might be multi-dimensional in nature • that there is a sophisticated cover-up by the military of which even the POTUS isn’t aware • what Shellenberger’s new sources told him about Grusch’s claims, and more…

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Is the Government Hiding Aliens? A commentary on the latest UAP/UFO story about the whistleblower and the government UFO retrieval program. In this special episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer addresses the latest claims by a whistleblower that the U.S. government and its allies has spacecraft that are “off-world,” meaning extraterrestrial in nature.

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Shermer and Thornton discuss: aggression: passive, proactive, reactive, relational • moralistic punishment and the game theory analysis of the logic of violence • gun violence (homicide, suicide, accidents) • violence against women/children • male-on-male violence • alcohol, drugs, infidelity • race • self-control • training soldiers • male role models • Rodney King, Michael Brown, George Floyd • police violence • bullying • fatherless homes • rape and sexual violence • self-defense.

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Shermer and Mac Donald discuss: race as America’s original sin • civil rights • equality vs. equity • disparate impact • overt racism vs. systemic racism • why Blacks make less money, own fewer and lower quality homes, work in less prestigious jobs, hold fewer seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, run fewer Fortune 500 companies • race and science, medicine, classical music, opera, Juilliard, Swan Lake, museums, and the law • crime and mass shootings • George Floyd and race riots • the future of the problem of race trumping merit and what to do about it.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss355_Simon_Winchester_2023_04_18.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Winchester discuss:

• how to become a professional writer
• ChatGPT, GPT-4, and AI
• knowledge as justified true belief
• What is truth?
• Are we living in a post-truth world of fake news, alternative facts, postmodernism and relativism?
• education, past and present
• books and the printing press
• the history and future of encyclopedias
• museums: should they repatriate objects taken during colonialism (e.g., the Elgin Marbles)?
• photography
• print journalism
• broadcast journalism
• search engines and knowledge dispersal
• internet and knowledge.

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Perfectionists, The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, and Krakatoa, most of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts. His new book is Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic.

About the BookFrom the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes — this is award winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things — no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization — are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?

Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion — from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.

Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom? Does Rene Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum — “I think therefore I am,” the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenment — still hold?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss353_Inga_Thompson_2023_05_18.mp3Download MP3Inga Thompson is one of the most decorated cyclists in American history. She competed at the 1984, 1988, and 1992 Olympic games. Inga won silver medals at the world championships in 1987, 1990 and 1991, and placed third at the Tour de France in 1986 and 1989. She also won the U.S. National Road Race Championships in 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, and 1993. In 2014 she was inducted in the U.S Bicycling Hall of Fame and has since worked to advance women in sports, and as such serves on many advocacy groups and has her own Inga Thompson Foundation (ingathompsonfoundation.org) that advocates for women’s sports.

You might ask, besides being aware I’m something of a bike geek, why am I having a cyclist on the show? Well, we’re not here to talk about bikes or training diets.

We are here to talk about what happened to Inga when she spoke out in defense of women’s rights. Not against bible-thumping religious fundamentalists who think women belong in the kitchen and bedroom making dinner and babies, but against her fellow liberals.

Let me be clear: this is a sensitive and complex issue. Transgender individuals often experience body dysmorphia. Common treatments for dysmorphia include hormone therapy and gender affirmation surgery, which typically entails surgically creating a neovagina, breast implants, facial feminization, and sometimes hair transplants or alteration of the vocal cords.

These physical changes often help alleviate the symptoms, but they do not fundamentally change the physical advantages the transgender—born biologically male—athlete would have over biological women when competing in women’s sports.

This poses the challenge of conflicting rights, which is the subject of this conversation…

What should we do when transgender athletes, with all the physical advantages of being born male, compete against and defeat biological females?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss354_Michio_Kaku_2023_05_12.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Kaku discuss:

• AI, GPT, and the end of humanity or civilization or something bad
• AI and sentience/consciousness
• What is intelligence?
• quantum physics
• decoherence
• Uncertainty Principle
• Schrodinger’s cat
• multiverse, parallel universes, and Many Worlds hypothesis
• Einstein
• the evolution of the computer
• quantum computers and…
  • the origin of life
  • climate change solutions
  • feeding 10 billion people
  • energizing the world
  • economics and money (cryptocurrency?)
  • health
  • gene editing and curing cancer
  • immortality
  • simulating the universe
• UAPs and UFOs
• chaos theory and indeterminism
• Are we living in a simulation?
• free will and determinism
• Is the universe predetermined?
• the end of science?
• Is there a God?

Michio Kaku is the co-founder of String Field Theory and is the Henry Semat Professor in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York. He graduated with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has hosted several TV specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery Channel, and the Science Channel. He hosts two national science radio shows, Exploration and Science Fantastic. He is the author of numerous New York Times bestselling books including: The God Equation, The Future of the Mind, The Future of Humanity, Physics of the Future, Hyperspace, Parallel Worlds, Physics of the Impossible, and Beyond Einstein. His new book is Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything.

About the BookThe runaway success of the microchip processor may be reaching its end. Running up against the physical constraints of smaller and smaller sizes, traditional silicon chips are not likely to prove useful in solving humanity’s greatest challenges, from climate change, to global starvation, to incurable diseases. But the quantum computer, which harnesses the power and complexity of the atomic realm, already promises to be every bit as revolutionary as the transistor and microchip once were. Its unprecedented gains in computing power herald advancements that could change every aspect of our daily lives.

Automotive companies, medical researchers, and consulting firms are betting on quantum computing, hoping to exploit its power to design more efficient vehicles, create life-saving new drugs, and streamline industries to revolutionize the economy. But this is only the beginning. Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that create clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world’s growing populations. And they could unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s, helping us to live longer, healthier lives. There is not a single problem humanity faces that couldn’t be addressed by quantum computing. Told with Kaku’s signature clarity and enthusiasm, Quantum Supremacy is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity’s future.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss352_Michael_Shermer_2023_05_18.mp3Download MP3In the final minutes of the final lecture of Dr. Shermer’s final semester at Chapman a student asked what practical lessons for life he might share with them. Dr. Shermer offered as much as he could think of off the top of his head, but since he has researched and written a fair amount on this topic over the decades he sat down and wrote out a final lecture here, not only for his students but for anyone who is interested in knowing what tools science and reason can provide for how to live a good life and how to deal with entropy, problems, setbacks and obstacles, aka normal life. Here are the ten lessons…

1. The First Law of Life
2. To Thine Own Self Be True
3. Be Antifragile
4. Be Self-Disciplined Because Action is Character
5. Don’t be a Victim
6. Don’t Eat the Marshmallow
7. Directing Your Future Self
8. Be Your Own Financial Advisor
9. Build Strong Social Networks
10. Find Your Meaning and Purpose in Life

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss351_Mark_Skousen_2023_04_14.mp3Download MP3Mark Skousen is a Presidential Fellow and the Doti-Spogli Endowed Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University. He has a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in economics (George Washington University, 1977). In 2018, Mr. Steve Forbes awarded him the Triple Crown in Economics for his work in theory, history, and education. He has taught economics, business and finance at Columbia Business School and Columbia University. He has worked for the government (CIA), non-profits (president of FEE, the Foundation for Economic Education), and been a consultant to IBM and other Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of over 25 books, including The Making of Modern Economics and The Maxims of Wall Street. He has been editor in chief of an award-winning investment newsletter, Forecasts & Strategies, since 1980. He has written for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine. He produces “FreedomFest, the world’s largest gathering of free minds,” every July in Las Vegas and other cities. He and his wife have five children and eight grandchildren, and have lived in three countries and visited 77. Influenced by his work The Structure of Production (NYU Press, 1990), the federal government began publishing a broader, more accurate measure of the economy, Gross Output (GO), every quarter along with GDP. It is the first macro statistic of the economy to be published quarterly since GDP was invented in the 1940s. His books can be found at skousenbooks.com. His website is markskousen.com.

Shermer and Skousen discuss:

• Is economics politicized?
• Adam Smith and what he really said
• how the economy really works
• fiat money vs. gold standard money
• inflation and what to do about it
• experimental economics
• comparing countries with economic measures
• How much regulation does capitalism need?
• progressive vs. flat taxes
• Keynesian economics
• economic booms and busts
• why the economy crashed in 2008/2009
• Could the American economy ever collapse like Venezuela’s did?
• what the Fed does (or should do)
• Modern Monetary Theory
• GDP (Gross Domestic Product) vs. GO (Gross Output) as economic measures
• bitcoin/cryptocurrency
• why money matters
• monopolies, duopolies, and market capture
• antitrust, trustbusting
• profit and market efficiency
• the relationship between saving and spending, or time discounting: value the future enough to invest in it now but don’t plan for the greatest 90th birthday party ever in case you can’t make it
• What’s wrong with free market capitalism?
• money, happiness, and meaningfulness.

Key Questions to Understanding Economic Matters1. What is the secret to the success of capitalist nations, which have grown by leaps and bounds in the past 200 years? 2. What drives the economy—consumer spending, business investment, or government stimulus? 3. Why are young people so attracted to democratic socialism, and is there a better alternative? 4. Should valuable goods and services like college education, medical services, and transportation be made available to the public for free? 5. What is money, what is it based on without a gold standard, and can crypto ever replace it? 6. Are booms and busts and periods of inflation and recession (like we’re experiencing now) inevitable? 7. Do economists offer any solution to the global warming threat? (why we will never run out of fossil fuels)

Adam Smith in Five Basic Themes1. Pro savings, capital investment, and entrepreneurship 2. Limited government (laissez faire) 3. Balanced budgets except in times of war 4. Sound money (gold/silver standard) 5. Free trade.

Fraser Institute of Canada has rated most countries on the degree of economic freedom. They have found a direct correlation between the level of economic freedom and a country’s standard of living. The think tank uses five criteria to determine each nation’s level of economic freedom, linked to Adam Smith’s classical model.

1. Size of government
2. Property rights and legal structure
3. Sound money
4. Trade policy
5. Business regulation.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss350_Kelly_Pope_2023_04_13.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Pope discuss:

• SBF and FTX
• Bernie Madoff
• The Tinder Swindler
• How gullible are people, really?
• intentional perps, accidental perps, and righteous perps
• innocent bystanders and organizational targets
• accidental whistleblowers, noble whistleblowers, and vigilante whistleblowers
• identity theft
• elder theft
• IRS scams
• doping in sports
• Frank Abagnale Jr.
• Edward Snowden and Julian Assange as righteous perps
• Daniel Ellsberg as a noble whistleblower
• Phil Zimbardo and The Lucifer Effect (bad apple barrels, not bad apples) and perps
• how to tell if you have been a victim of financial fraud.

Kelly Richmond Pope is the Barry Jay Epstein Endowed Professor of Forensic Accounting at DePaul University in Chicago. Pope’s research on executive misconduct culminated in directing and producing the award-winning documentary, All the Queen’s Horses, which explores the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history. In 2020 the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and CPA Practice Advisor named Pope as one of the twenty-five Most Powerful Women in Accounting. Her new book is Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry. Connect with her at kellyrichmondpope.com.

About the BookHave you ever wondered why Bernie Madoff thought he could brazenly steal his clients’ money? Or why investors were so easily duped by Elizabeth Holmes? Or how courageous people like Jeffrey Wigand are willing to become whistleblowers and put their careers on the line?

Fraud is everywhere, from Nigerian “princes,” embezzlers, and Ponzi schemers to corporate giants like Enron and Volkswagen. And fraud is costly. Each year, consumers, small businesses, governments, and corporations lose trillions of dollars to financial crime. We’re so accustomed to hearing about fraud that our abilities to identify it and speak about it are limited.

In Fool Me Once, renowned forensic accounting expert Kelly Richmond Pope shows fraud in action, uncovering what makes perps tick, victims so gullible, and whistleblowers so morally righteous, while also encouraging us to look at our own behaviors and motivations in the hope of protecting ourselves and our companies. Pope will inspire you to question your own preconceived notions about fraud. She will challenge your beliefs about yourself and other people, and help you understand a phenomenon that most of us fail to grasp — until it’s too late.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss349_Jean_Twenge_2023_05_04.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Twenge discuss:

• how data is collected on generations
• how to untangle the rat’s nest of interacting causal variables (age, gender, race, religion, politics, SES, big events, slow trends, time-period effects, and generational effects)
• how to determine which direction the causal arrow points (e.g., autonomy to politics or vice versa)
• how generations are defined as fuzzy sets/conceptual categories
• comparative method: what about generations in other countries?
• What about the “Greatest Generation” and the “Lost Generation”? No data?
• how historical events effect generations: The Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War and its end, AIDS, 9/11, The Great Recession, Covid-19… #metoo, #BLM, trans, AI…?
• how long-term trends effect generations: economic trends (inflation, unemployment, income inequality), political trends (more conservative or liberal), cultural trends (music, fashion), societal trends (freedom and autonomy vs. safety and security)
• technology as a driver of generational differences: TV, home appliances, AC, birth control, computers, Internet, social media
• cyclical theories of generational change
• slow-life vs. fast-life strategies
• civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights…
• abortion and reproductive choice
• education
• religion
• marriage, children, home ownership, sex, birthrates, divorce
• happiness, meaningfulness and the search for purpose in self and others
• mental health (depression, anxiety, self-harm, loneliness)
• alcohol, drugs
• cancel culture and free speech issues
• cultures of honor vs. cultures of victimhood
• self-esteem movement
• moral progress
• future generations: economic, political, social, and population trends.

Jean M. Twenge, PhD, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, is the author of more than a hundred scientific publications and several books based on her research, including Generations, iGen, and Generation Me. Her research has been covered in Time, The Atlantic, Newsweek, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and the Washington Post. She has also been featured on Today, Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, CBS This Morning, and NPR. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters.

About the BookThe United States is currently home to six generations of people:

• Silents, born 1925–1945
• Baby Boomers, born 1946–1964
• Gen X, born 1965–1979
• Millennials, born 1980–1994
• Gen Z, born 1995–2012
• Polars, born after 2012

They have had vastly different life experiences and thus, one assumes, they must have vastly diverging beliefs and behaviors. But what are those differences, what causes them, and how deep do they actually run?

Professor of psychology and “reigning expert on generational change,” Jean Twenge does a deep dive into a treasure trove of long-running, government-funded surveys and databases to answer these questions. Are we truly defined by major historical events, such as the Great Depression for the Silents and September 11 for Millennials? Or, as Twenge argues, is it the rapid evolution of technology that differentiates the generations?

With her clear-eyed and insightful voice, Twenge explores what the Silents and Boomers want out of the rest of their lives; how Gen X-ers are facing middle age; the ideals of Millennials as parents and in the workplace; and how Gen Z has been changed by COVID, among other fascinating topics.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss348_Tanya_Luhrmann_2023_04_11.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Luhrmann discuss:

• What is the anthropology of religion?
• What is “that still small voice” we all hear in our heads?
• When people say they “hear the voice of God” what does that mean?
• What do people mean when they say they are “walking with God”?
• normal “voices within” vs. hallucinations and psychoses
• psychiatrist Milton Rokeach’s book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
• mystical experiences
• anomalous psychological experiences
• sleep paralysis and other cognitive anomalies
• belief in angels and demons
• absorption and religious beliefs
• prayer vs. meditation vs. mindfulness
• sensed presences
• What is faith?
• What is religion?
• why people believe in God
• Charismatic/Pentacostal religions
• empirical truths, religious truths, mythic truths
• how people come to religious belief vs. how they leave religion
• theodicy, or the problem of evil
• kindling
• magic and superstition
• witches and witchcraft
• shamans and shamanism.

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Albert Ray Lang Professor at Stanford University, where she teaches anthropology and psychology. Her books include When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God and How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others. She has written for the New York Times, and her work has been featured in the New Yorker and other magazines. She lives in Stanford, California.

About the BookHow do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people — as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion Tanya M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort — by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others — helps to explain the enduring power of faith.

Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more.

A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits―but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.

Show NotesOn January 19, 2023 I received a letter from a reader of my work related to what might actually be happening when people claim that they hear the voice of God, sometimes through prophecy but more often through prayer and otherwise daily occurrences. Here is the letter:

Hi Michael!

I am a big fan of your work and appreciate your careful thought. Your ability to charitably and critically consider all sorts of views, even wild claims is inspiring! I am really trying to apply the same kind of critical thinking you encourage to my own worldview. In brief, I grew up Christian but have come to really question most of the worldview I grew up with as I have learned more about critical thinking, cognitive biases, science, history, etc.

However, I am still very much a part of a Christian community, since my entire family is still Christian. An issue that comes up often, that I would love to hear your input on, is the idea that God “speaks” to people individually and regularly. Also, that God gives “prophetic words” to people today about future events. I sincerely doubt this myself.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, especially after reading the latest issue of Skeptic magazine on Christian Nationalism. As I am sure you are aware, many Christian leaders claimed to hear from God that Trump was going to win the 2020 election. When he did not, very few of them admitted they were wrong or mistaken. This is just one example of a very pervasive problem in Christian culture. Many people base important life decisions — or even insurrections — on their perceptions, or those of their leaders, of God’s personal revelation to them. This can come in the form of an “impression,” a confident feeling, a “still small voice,” a personal interpretation of a cherry-picked Bible verse, a picture in their mind, unique circumstances, etc.

Do you have any past articles or podcasts on this topic? I could not find any. Specifically, about how to evaluate claims of hearing from God? I want to find a better way to help people in my community consider the likelihood that they are not hearing from God, but in a charitable way. My own opinion is that cognitive bias and motivated reason most likely account for the majority of these claims. This also, in my view, accounts for much of the Bible’s claims that God commanded terrible things like sacrificing Isaac, acceptance of slavery, the Canaanite genocide, etc. — fallible humans believed they heard from God, but were mistaken. Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for your great work and your generous spirit!

—Taylor

One hypothesis is that there is a God and this deity communicates directly to and through people for a variety of claimed reasons, from love, reassurance and comfort, to answering prayers, delivering prophecy, and announcing forthcoming events. How a presumably incorporeal deity could “speak” to corporeal humans is never explained beyond the ubiquitous “God works in mysterious ways.” This is a variety of the “God of the gaps” argument: where human understanding or explanation is lacking to answer some question or explain some phenomenon (the origin of the universe, life, morality, consciousness, the eye, DNA, etc.) that is where God still operates in human affairs. Some theologians who follow the science chase the ever diminishing gaps in search of God’s providence; other believers are comfortable attributing everything that happens to God, from life-changing world events to the fall of every sparrow; still other religious people allow that the laws of nature, which God designed, account for nearly everything that happens, save a rare miracle attributed to the deity; still other and more “liberal theologians” think God created everything and then stepped back and does not act at all in the world. So many options from which to choose and no agreed-upon methodology among theologians as to determine which position is the likeliest one to be true. What is a critical thinker to think?

I am reminded of psychiatrist Milton Rokeach’s book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, the story of three of his patients, each of whom believe himself to be Jesus Christ. Inspired by another case where two women who both believed they were the Virgin Mary met each other, Rokeach brought his three Christs together, each of whom instantly recognized the other two as delusional. Hoping the encounter might attenuate his patients’ delusional state, Rokeach admitted that the only thing cured was “my godlike delusion that I could manipulate them out of their beliefs.”1

References1. Rokeach, Milton. 1964/2011. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. New York: Knopf/New York Review Book. If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss347_Michael_Shermer_2023_05_03.mp3Download MP3In this special episode of the podcast, Michael Shermer talks about:

• why race still matters
• why race shouldn’t matter
• racism
• BLM (Black Lives Matter), CRT (Critical Race Theory), DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
• Anti-bias training
• the Implicit Association Test and if it measures unconscious racism
• race and IQ and why such group differences are environmental and not genetic
• how we can achieve a post-race world.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss346_Kennon_Sheldon_2023_04_06.mp3Download MP3It’s become fashionable to argue that free will is a fiction: that we humans are in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases and only think that we are choosing freely. In Freely Determined, research psychologist Kennon Sheldon argues that this perception is not only wrong but also dangerous. Drawing on decades of his own groundbreaking empirical research into motivation and goal setting, Sheldon shows us that embracing the ability to choose our path in life makes us happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. He also shows that this insight can help us choose better goals—ones that are concordant with our values and that, critically, we’re more likely to actually see through. Providing readers insight into how they can live a more self-directed, satisfying life, Sheldon offers an essential guide for how we might recognize our freedom and use it wisely.

Kennon M. Sheldon is professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. He is one of the founding researchers of positive psychology, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a recipient of the Templeton Foundation Positive Psychology Prize. He lives in Columbia, Missouri. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and scholarly books, including Stability of Happiness: Theories and Evidence on Whether Happiness Can Change; Designing the Future of Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward; Current Directions in Psychological Science; and Self-Determination Theory in the Clinic. His new book integrates all this research into a popular trade book Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live.

Shermer and Sheldon discuss:

• definitions of free will, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will, etc.
• Christian List’s three related capacities for free will: (1) The capacity to consider several possibilities for action; (2) the capacity to form an intention to pursue one of those possibilities; (3) the capacity to take action to move toward that possibility.
• AI, Star Trek’s Data, sentience and consciousness, ChatGPT, GPT-4…
• why free will matters: how what people believe about free will and determinism influences their behaviors
• the case for hard determinism: Sam Harris’s example of changing atoms with career criminals
• Could we have done otherwise? (see show notes below)
• the three horsemen of determinism: (1) reductionist/materialist perspective (the building blocks are too far away from the action); (2) predetermination; (3) epiphenomenalism: a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process.
• dualism and free will
• Is The Self an illusion?
• How does the choice-making architecture work in the brain?
• levels of organization (it’s not just free-floating atoms) and the grand hierarchy of human reality
• brain injuries, tumors, addictions, and other “determiners” of behavior
• emergence
• TOTE: Test – operate – test – exit
• personality and the source of free will
• SDT: Self-Determination Theory
• intrinsic motivation and external rewards
• symbolic self: (1) to provide a social face that interfaces with others’ faces in the social world; (2) to defend that face against threats; and (3) to operate and regulate the action system
• where the symbolic self is in the brain
• how people change their personalities
• System 1 vs. System 2 thinking
• Experiencing Self vs. Remembered Self
• strangers to ourselves: do others know us better than we know ourselves?
• subjective well-being and happiness.

Excerpt from Dr. Shermer’s book The Moral Arc, in the chapter on free will and justiceThe principle of determinism holds that every event in the universe has a prior cause. If all effects have causes, including human thoughts and actions, then where in the causal chain does the act of choice enter? Even if there were a Mini-Me up there calling the shots, his little brain would have to be just as determined as my big brain, so for Mini-Me to have free will he would have to have a miniMini-Me inside of him pulling his strings, and miniMini-Me would himself need an itty-bitty miniMini-Me inside of his brain…ad infinitum. And if you believe in souls, this fails in the same way as Mini-Me does. A soul inside of you pulling your strings does not grant you freedom; it just means the soul is in control. And having a soul would mean that there’s a mini-soul inside the soul directing its actions, and so forth. It would seem that if determinism is true then we do not have free will. And yet…we feel free. We feel like we make choices.

Could we have done otherwise?

Philosophers employ thought experiments to test ideas. Here’s one for the free will-determinism problem. John Doe is an exceptionally moral person who is happily married to Jane. The chances of John ever cheating on Jane is close to zero. But the odds are not zero because John is human, so let’s say—for the sake of argument—that John has a one-night stand while on the road and Jane finds out. How does John account for his actions? Does he, pace the standard deterministic explanation for human behavior, say something like this to Jane?

Honey, my will is simply not of my own making. My thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which I am unaware and over which I exert no conscious control. I do not have the freedom you think I have. I could not have done otherwise…

Could John even finish the thought before the stinging slap of Jane’s hand across his face terminated the rationalization?

If free will is the power to do otherwise, both John and Jane know that, of course, he could have done otherwise, and she reminds him that should those circumstances arise again he damn well better make the right choice…or else.

Consider the “could you have done otherwise?” in a rewind of the tape of life question. If it is a Read Only Memory (ROM) tape, then no, because that’s just a recording of what happened replayed. But time flows forward and the future can never perfectly match the past (determinists’ thought experiments notwithstanding) so what you did in the past influences what you choose to do next/future circumstances (it’s called learning), which are always different from the past.

So while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward (self-determined) in the context of what already happened and what might happen. This assumes the universe is not pre-determined but rather post-determined, and we are part of the causal net of determining factors. If the entire universe is a ROM tape then determinism is true and free will/compatibilism false. But most physicists/scientists do not think the universe is pre-determined (from the Big Bang moment it was determined I would type these words), so volition/agency/choice arise from our participation in the universe.

This is what I strongly suspect, and in my book The Moral Arc I worked out how accepting a determined universe does not preclude retaining free will and moral responsibility through four compatibilist workarounds: (1) modular mind—even though a brain consists of many neural networks in which one network may make a choice that another network finds about later, they are all still operating in a single brain; (2) free won’t—vetoing competing impulses and choosing one thought or action over another); (3) choice as part of the causal net—wherein our volitional acts are part of the determined universe but are still our choices; (4) degrees of moral freedom—a range of choice options varying by degrees of complexity and the number of intervening variables.1

1. Modular MindIf a subcortical region of my brain sends a signal to a cortical region of my brain to inform it of a preference, it is still my brain making the choice. It is still me—an autonomous volitional being—making choices, regardless of which part of me is actually making the decision. In his book Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite, the evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban shows how the brain evolved as a modular multitasking problem-solving organ—a Swiss Army Knife of practical tools in the old metaphor, or an app-loaded iPhone in Kurzban’s upgrade.2 There is no unified “self” that generates internally consistent and seamlessly coherent beliefs devoid of conflict. Instead, we are a collection of distinct but interacting modules that are often at odds with one another, and the decision-making process often happens unconsciously, so it seems as if choices are being made for us from we know not where. But the brain scan studies reveal the source and process of neural decision making, allowing us to build volition back into our brains. There is, after all, a Mini-Me—lots of them in fact—all of them with preferences, many of them in competition with one another, and all of them inside of a single brain.

2. Free Won’tIf we define free will as the power to do otherwise, a useful approach is to conceptualize “free will” as “free won’t”—i.e., as the power to veto one impulse in favor of another. Free won’t is the capacity to reject a particular action arising from the unconscious neural network, such that any decision to act one way instead of another way is an authentic choice. We have limitations, it’s true—we cannot just do anything we choose—but for the most part we have veto power; we have the capacity to say “no”; we can act this way instead of that way, and that is a real choice.

Support for this hypothesis can be found in a 2007 study conducted by neuroscientists Marcel Brass and Patrick Haggard, who used fMRI brain scans while subjects made choices. But at the last moment the subjects could change their minds and override their initial decision to press a button. When they chose to veto their initial decision, the scientists discovered that a specific area of the brain lit up—the left dorsal frontomedian cortex (dFMC)—an area that is normally active during decision-making behavior, especially during the intentional inhibition of a choice. Tellingly, there were no differences in the brain regions active in preparation of a voluntary action and those involved in inhibiting such actions. “Our results suggest that the human brain network for intentional action includes a control structure for self-initiated inhibition or withholding of intended actions.”3 That is free won’t.

Even Benjamin Libet himself—the instigator of this line of research that has led so many neuroscientists to abandon belief in free will—in the end came down in favor of human nature containing a volitional element: “The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place. We may view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as ‘bubbling up’ in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and abort.”4

What this research implies is that the neural architecture of choice can be modified by experience—in other words, training and practice—which means that in the long run, with better neuroscience and technology, we could not only teach people how to impede their maladaptive impulses to, say, eat unhealthy foods or take dangerous drugs, but also, in principle, we could train criminals to learn to veto their early and dangerous choices in order to make more socially acceptable decisions. And the choice is real in this way: regardless of which part of our brain makes our choices, they are still our choices, and even the apparently subconscious ones can be overridden by conscious effort.

1. Free Choice as Part of the Deterministic Causal NetThe enormity, intricacy, and ultimate unknowability of the causal net of the universe leads us to feel as if we are acting freely. But it is more than a feeling. As with our capacity for free won’t and consciously choosing to override desires bubbling up from the unconscious, our choices are genuine neural processes. As Daniel Dennett argues in his book Freedom Evolves,5 our ancestors made decisions to behave in ways that result in actual consequences for survival and reproduction in our evolutionary history, and this led to the evolution of a neural architecture for behavioral choice.6 Dennett argues that free will arises from a number of our characteristics of cognition, including a sense of being self-aware and aware that others are self-aware; symbolic language that allows us to communicate the fact that we are aware and self-aware; complex neural circuitry that allows for many behavioral options arising out of numerous neural impulses; a theory of mind about others that enables us to think about what they’re thinking about; and evolved moral emotions about right and wrong choices. And because we can communicate complex ideas through language, we have the power to reason about these moral choices. Out of this collection of cognitive characteristics comes free will because we can, and do, weigh the consequences of the many courses of action available to us at any given moment.

2. Moral Degrees of FreedomA final way to understand volition in a deterministic system is through the concept of “degrees of freedom”—the range of options that an organism has as a result of its complexity and the number of intervening variables acting upon it. Insects, for example, have very few degrees of freedom and are guided mostly by fixed instincts. Reptiles and birds have more degrees of freedom enabled by modifiable instincts that are subject to environmental triggers in critical periods, with subsequent life experience allowing for learned responses to changing environments. Mammals, especially the great apes, have many more degrees of freedom through considerable neural plasticity and learning. And humans have the most degrees of freedom, with our massive cortex and our highly developed culture. Within our own species, some people—psychopaths, the brain damaged, the severely depressed, or the chemically addicted—have fewer degrees of freedom than other people, and the law adjusts for their lowered capacity for legal and moral culpability. But we still hold them accountable for their actions to the extent that they have control over their choices, especially their capacity to, say, veto their criminal impulses.

The law also recognizes degrees of freedom by distinguishing between various grades of murder, which are classified according to circumstance and intent. First-degree murder is the unlawful killing of one human being by another, with malice aforethought—that is murder, both intentional and premeditated. Second-degree murder is the unlawful killing of one human being by another, but without malice aforethought—that is, it is not intentional and premeditated. Voluntary manslaughter is the unlawful killing of one human being by another without prior intent to kill, and is committed under circumstances that would “cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed,” as in a crime of passion—a situation that is sometimes called voluntary manslaughter. Involuntary manslaughter is neither deliberate nor premeditated and is reserved for fatal accidents due to negligence, for example deaths caused by drunk driving. And, as we shall see below, there are murders caused by mitigating factors such as tumors, PTSD, depression, and so on—factors that are assumed to restrict the autonomy of the accused and are thus taken into account during the sentencing phase of a trial. Finally, there are lawful killings, such as those that occur in war, as a result of self-defense, or capital punishment by a state. All of these ways in which a human life is cut short, either lawfully or unlawfully, by individuals or the state, take into account circumstances, intent, and moral degrees of freedom.7

References1. Shermer, Michael. 2015. The Moral Arc. New York: Henry Holt. 2. Kurzban, Robert. 2012. Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite. Princeton University Press. 3. Brass, Marcel and Patrick Haggard. 2007. “To Do or Not to Do: The Neural Signature of Self Control.” The Journal of Neuroscience, 27(34), 9141–9145. 4. Libet, Benjamin. 1999. “Do We Have Free Will?” Journal of Consciousness Studies. 6(809), 47–57, 54. 5. Dennett, Daniel. 2003. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking. 6. For a discussion of how the brain operates to make economic decisions that feel “free” to the decision maker, see: Glimcher, P. W. 2003. Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain: The Science of Neuroeconomics. Cambridge: MIT Press. See also Steven Pinker’s excellent discussion on free will and determinism in: Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 175. 7. Scheb, John M. and John M. Scheb II. 2010. Criminal Law and Procedure. 7th edition. Cengage Learning. If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss345_Matt_Johnson_2023_03_21.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Johnson discuss:

• Hitchens on free expression, identity politics, radicalism, interventionism, authoritarianism, patriotism, internationalism, America and Liberalism, reparations, religion, and death
• What is the Left, the Right?
• the many strands of liberalism
• resurgent nationalism and authoritarianism
• identity politics, Left and Right
• hostility to free speech
• great power competition between Russia and China and the US
• nationalism vs. internationalism/globalism
• 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Hitch’s hatred for theocracy and totalitarianism
• why Hitch did not become a neoconservative or a warmonger or imperialist
• Hitch’s defense of Iraq’s Kurds and the women of Afghanistan and his belief that the international community shouldn’t allow dictatorships to massacre and torture civilians
• principles vs. politics
• What is Enlightenment Liberalism?
• Trump and the division of the right
• Why left-wing illiberalism (obsession with identity politics, efforts to squelch free speech on campuses and in the media, and apologies for despotic governments and movements as long as they oppose the U.S.) is no way to resist right-wing authoritarianism
• Hitch on the precursors to Trump: the Tea Party movement and demagogic anti-elitism of Sarah Palin
• Putin and Russian nationalism.

Matt Johnson writes for Haaretz, Quillette, American Purpose, South China Morning Post, The Bulwark, Areo, Arc Digital, RealClearDefense, The Kansas City Star, and many other publications. His new book is How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment.

About the BookChristopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today’s left, he’s remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks.

In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important.

Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire.

Hitchens’s case for universal Enlightenment principles won’t just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss344_Michael_Shermer_2023_04_20.mp3Download MP3In this special episode of the Michael Shermer Show Dr. Shermer comments on current events surrounding trans matters and reads his in-depth essay on the subject, originally published as one of his regularly Skeptic columns on Substack.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss343_Tim_Redmond_2023_03_10.mp3Download MP3The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes.

Shermer and Redmond discuss:

• why we have political parties
• why we have a duopoly: a leading theory, referred to as Duverger’s law, states that two parties are a natural result of a winner-take-all voting system
• tribal theory of democracy
• parties vs. policies
• Are we living in a post-truth, fake-news, alternative facts world?
• How do we know political polarization is worse now than in the past?
• acquiring, perceiving, and evaluating political information
• evaluating: false political information, political numbers and arguments, claims of rigged election
• Whataboutism and moral equivalency: Fox News vs. MSNBC/CNN
• What news sources should we trust, and how can we tell?
• illusion of understanding
• illusion of truth effect
• cognitive responsibilities of citizenship
• cognitive biases and political polarization
• losers’ consent to election outcomes
• winners’ magnanimity
• myside bias and numeracy vs. innumeracy
• solutions to the polarization problem.

Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He is an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics. He is a professor at Daemen University where he teaches a political science and history course for education students.

About the BookIn Political Tribalism in America, Timothy Redmond provides a host of actionable strategies that are designed to reduce the influence of political tribalism in our lives. The book includes instructions for plumbing the depths of political views; evaluating sources of political information; engaging in difficult political conversations; appraising political data; and assessing political arguments. This how-to guide is a must-read for partisans who want to become more critical political thinkers.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss342_Valerie_Fridland_2023_03_22.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Fridland discuss:

• Okay, Boomer language
• immigrant parents, children, and accents
• ChatGPT
• gender pronouns
• gender differences in language use
• forensic language analysis
• “See you later” (Amanda Knox)
• evolution of language
• top-down vs. bottom-up language change (9/11 vs. the “brights”)
• why children learn language naturally but must be taught to read and write
• vowels: a, e, i, o, u, but: beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, but, bot, bought, bout, boy, bike, book, boot
• the Oxford English Dictionary, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary and common word use
• the influence of books of common etiquette in the Early Modern Period
• the influence on language use from literature, films, and television
• cancel culture and taboo language
• language and identity politics
• why print it as f@%k instead of fuck?
• y’all, contractions, and other language shortcuts
• Was there a first language?
• tracking human migrations by language, and vice versa
• regional differences in language use and accents
• language customs across social and economic classes
• Fargo
• Yada, yada yada,

Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. She writes a popular language blog on Psychology Today called “Language in the Wild,” and is also a professor for The Great Courses series.

About the BookParanoid about the “ums” and “uhs” that pepper your presentations? Concerned that people notice your vocal fry? Bewildered by “hella” or the meteoric rise of “so”? What if these features of our speech weren’t a sign of cultural and linguistic degeneration, but rather, some of the most dynamic and revolutionary tools at our disposal?

In Like, Literally, Dude, linguist Valerie Fridland shows how we can re-imagine these forms as exciting new linguistic frontiers rather than our culture’s impending demise. With delightful irreverence and expertise built over two decades of research, Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how that impacts what our kids may be saying tomorrow. She teaches us that language is both function and fashion, and that though we often blame the young, the female, and the uneducated for its downfall, we should actually thank them for their linguistic ingenuity.

By exploring the dark corners every English teacher has taught us to avoid, Like, Literally, Dude redeems our most pilloried linguistic quirks, arguing that they are fundamental to our social, professional, and romantic success—perhaps even more so than our clothing or our resumes. It explains how filled pauses benefit both speakers and listeners; how the use of “dude” can help people bond across social divides; why we’re always trying to make our intensifiers ever more intense; as well as many other language tics, habits, and developments.

Language change is natural, built into the language system itself, and we wouldn’t be who we are without it. Like, Literally, Dude celebrates the dynamic, ongoing, and empowering evolution of language, and it will speak to anyone who talks, or listens, inspiring them to communicate dynamically and effectively in their daily lives.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss341_John_Lisle_2023_03_17.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Lisle discuss:

• why countries have spy agencies
• the development of the modern American spy agency: From COI to OSS to CIA
• Wild Bill Donavan
• Stanley Lovell as Professor Moriarty
• Vannevar Bush
• Division 19
• George Kistiakowsky and the Aunt Jemima explosive weapon
• dirty tricks weapons: cat bombs, bat bombs, rat bomb, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, camouflaged explosives
• A-pills, B-pills, E-pills, L-pills
• psychological warfare
• heavy water and nuclear weapons
• Werner Heisenberg, Moe Berg, and Carl Eifler
• camouflage technologies
• biological warfare
• chemical warfare
• Operation Paperclip
• truth drugs
• Sidney Gottlieb, LSD, and MKULTRA (Bluebird, Artichoke).

John Lisle is a historian of science and the American intelligence community. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas and has taught courses on U.S. history, cyberspace, and information warfare at the University of Texas, Louisiana Tech University, and Austin Community College. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, Skeptic, The Journal of Intelligence History, and Physics in Perspective. The Dirty Tricks Department is his first book. In Vol. 25, No. 2 of Skeptic he wrote about MKULTRA, the CIA program in search of mind control technology.

About the BookIn the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the man who had summoned him. After a disconcerting amount of time, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the OSS, walked in the door. “You know your Sherlock Holmes, of course,” Donovan said as an introduction. “Professor Moriarty is the man I want for my staff…I think you’re it.”

Following this life-changing encounter, Lovell became the head of a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Their inventions included bat bombs, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, and camouflaged explosives. Moreover, they forged documents for undercover agents, plotted the assassination of foreign leaders, and performed truth drug experiments on unsuspecting subjects.

Based on extensive archival research and personal interviews, The Dirty Tricks Department tells the story of these scheming scientists, explores the moral dilemmas that they faced, and reveals their dark legacy of directly inspiring the most infamous program in CIA history: MKULTRA.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss340_Ben_Alderson-Day_2023_03_23.mp3Download MP3Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.

About the BookA psychologist’s journey to understand one of the most unusual experiences known to humankind: the universal, disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. These experiences of sensing a Presence when no one else is there have been given many names—the Third Man, guardian angels, shadow figures, “social” hallucinations—and they have inspired, unsettled, and confounded in equal measure.

While the contexts in which they occur are diverse, they are united by a distinct and uncanny feeling of visitation by another. But what does this feeling mean, and where does it come from? When and why do presences emerge? And how can we even begin to understand a phenomenon that can be transformative for those who experience it, and yet so hard to put into words?

The answers to these questions lie in this tour-de-force through contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy. Presence follows Ben Alderson-Day’s attempts—as a psychologist and a researcher—to understand how this experience is possible. What is a voice when it isn’t heard, and how otherwise do we know or feel that someone is in our presence? Is it a hallucination connected to psychosis, a change in the working of the brain, or something else?

The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds. Presence is the story of who we carry with us, at all times, as parts of ourselves.

Show NotesHeidi Love’s article on Sleep Paralysis published in Skeptic, recounting her personal experiences of the phenomenon:

I wake up with a start, feel that I’m paralyzed, feel this sort of tingly vibrating energy coursing through my body. I feel like I’m sort of…sinking…or falling backwards…like down into a giant bowl of warm tingly oatmeal. Rhythmic sensations of vibrations/electricity all over my skin and throughout my entire body. This comes also with a sound, a roar, a rush. The sound stays. I feel fear. I try to move, but can’t. It’s hard to breath, it’s hard to lift my chest, or to fill my lungs with air.

I can open my eyes just a slit so I can see everything in my room, and notice a huge bulking figure in the doorway coming toward me. It is a dark silhouette of something that kind of looks like a giant broad-shouldered ape. It is a monster or a demon of some sort. I can’t see a face—just an outline filled in with total darkness against the bright white light of my room and the doorway. It is totally aware of me and wants to do me harm. It is coming toward me and I am paralyzed and totally terrified. Struggling for breath, I panic and strain hard, directing all of my energy to try to move just one little finger…and finally, I do. I move a finger and the spell is broken. I “wake up” all the way. I feel groggy and drugged and hot. I am alone in my bedroom.

Just like people in the Middle Ages reported being sexually harassed in their beds by demons, or people today who claim to have been sexually molested by aliens, my sleep paralysis experiences have been both terrifying and sexual in nature. For example:

It is daylight, I am alone in the house and again, while there is fear, there is also intense sexual arousal. The entity in the room this time is, well…it’s performing oral sex on me and it’s doing a pretty damn good job. It’s sort of human, but sort of not human. It’s definitely kind of scary and threatening and demonic, but the sensation of it between my legs is totally real and feels good. I feel wide awake, yet paralyzed, I can see the room and I can see this dark strange face between my legs and I can feel everything that it’s doing to me. Despite my arousal, I still struggle to break the paralysis and finally do by moving a finger. I “wake up” in a state of intense sexual arousal.

From Michael Shermer’s 2011 book The Believing BrainThe descriptive phrase “third man” comes from T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land:

Who is the third who always walks beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together. But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding, wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded.

In his footnotes to this verse Eliot explained that they “were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.” In fact, in Shackleton’s account it was a fourth man who accompanied the remaining three in the party: “it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.” No matter, whether it is a third-man, fourth-man, angel, alien, or extra-man, it is the sensed presence that interests us here because this is yet another example of the brain’s capacity for agenticity, so I shall refer to such companions as sensed presences and the process as the sensed-presence effect.

In his book, The Third Man Factor, John Geiger lists the conditions that are associated with the generation of a sensed presence: monotony, darkness, barren landscapes, isolation, cold, injury, dehydration, hunger, fatigue, and fear.

To this list we can add sleep deprivation, which probably accounts for Charles Lindbergh’s sensed presence during his trans-Atlantic flight to Paris. During the historic journey, Lindbergh became aware that he had company in the cockpit of the Spirit of St. Louis, in which “the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences—vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane. I feel no surprise at their coming. There’s no suddenness to their appearance.” Most critically, these were not aberrations of the cockpit environment such as fog or reflected light because, as Lindbergh recounts, “Without turning my head, I see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision.” Lindbergh even heard “voices that spoke with authority and clearness,” yet after the flight reported, “I can’t remember a single word they said.” What were these phantom beings doing there? They were there to help, “conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.”

As the psychologist James Allan Cheyne, an expert on the study of preternatural experiences, observed: “There is often a dual consciousness associated with the presence in which a hard-nosed realist is simultaneously aware that the presence is not real in the normal sense of the term, yet utterly compelling; so compelling, and persistent, that food may be offered to the presence in a casual and automatic manner.”

All RAAM riders have stories to tell about bizarre experiences they have had under these extraordinary conditions. I would often perceive clusters of mailboxes on the side of the road in the Midwest as cheering fans come out to root us on. Blotches in the pavement from minor road repairs looked like animals and mythical creatures. In the 1982 race the Olympic cyclist John Howard told the ABC television camera crew: “The other day I saw about fifty yards of Egyptian hieroglyphics spread along the highway—craziest thing I’ve ever seen, but it was there!” In that same race John Marino recalled, “In the fog of Pennsylvania I was riding along and I visualized myself riding sideways in a fog tunnel. I put my hand down, stopped, got off the bike and sat down, then got back on the bike.” In the 1986 race Gary Verrill recounted his Out-of-Body like experience: “After day three my consciousness was in a dream state. I was alert enough to carry on a conversation, but at the same time was viewing myself from another plane. The sensation was exactly like dreaming—the only difference was in the disappointment of not being able to wake up or control the dream.”

In the 1990s when I was the Race Director, I would routinely come across blurry-eyed cyclists in the middle of the night blathering on about guardian angels, mysterious figures, and assorted cabals and conspiracies against them. One night in Kansas (where Dorothy had her vision quest to Oz) I came across a RAAM rider standing next to some railroad tracks. When I asked him what he was doing he explained that he was waiting to take the train to see God. More recently, four-time winner Jure Robic witnessed asphalt cracks morph into coded messages, and hallucinated bears, wolves, and even aliens. Also a member of Slovenia army, Robic once dismounted his bike to engage in combat a gaggle of mailboxes he was convinced were enemy troops, and another year found himself being chased by a howling band of black-bearded horsemen. “Mujahedeen, shooting at me,” Robic recalled, “So I ride faster.”

1,000-mile nonstop Iditarod sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, in which mushers go for 9-14 days on minimum sleep, are alone except for their dogs, rarely see other competitors, and hallucinate horses, trains, UFOs, invisible airplanes, orchestras, strange animals, voices without people, and occasionally phantom people on the side of the trail or imaginary friends hitching a ride on the sled and chatting it up with them during long lonely stretches. Four-time winner Lance Mackey recalled a day when he was riding the sled and saw a girl sitting by the side of the trail knitting. “She laughed at me, waved, and I went by her and she was gone. You just laugh.” A musher named Joe Garnie became convinced that a man was riding in his sled bag, so he politely asked the man to leave, but when he didn’t move Garnie tapped him on the shoulder and insisted he depart his sled, and when the stranger refused Garnie swatted him.”

I suggest four explanations: (1) An extension of the normal sensed presence we experience of real people around us; (2) A conflict between the low-road of emotions and the high-road of reason; (3) A conflict within the body schema, or our physical sense of self, in which the brain is tricked into thinking that there is another you; (4) A conflict within the mind schema, or our psychological sense of self, in which the mind is tricked into thinking that there is another mind.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss339_Gerald_Trisha_Posner_2023_03_15.mp3Download MP3Shermer and the Posners discuss:

• advice for would-be writers
• how books are researched and written
• the nature of human nature
• the nature of evil
• the Stanford Prison Experiment
• Milgram’s shock experiments on obedience to authority
• Abu Ghraib and other war crimes
• the banality of evil
• The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: from pharmaceutical salesman to death camp criminal
• Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler and other Nazis: what drove them to evil?
• No Hitler, no Holocaust? No Hitler, no World War II?
• What situations can cause good people to act bad?
• Are we all potential Nazis?
• Hugo Mercier, Not Born Yesterday, Germans ≠ Nazis, most people don’t join cults, most political advertising doesn’t work, etc.
• restorative justice and reparations for war crimes, art theft, slavery, etc.
• big pharma and who is responsible for the opioid crisis
• the Vatican, the Pope, and the future of Catholicism.

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. His 2015 book, God’s Bankers, a two-hundred-year history of the finances of the Vatican, was an acclaimed New York Times bestseller. 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. His other books include Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, Mengele: The Complete Story, Hitler’s Children: Sons and Daughters of leaders of the Third Reich Talk About Themselves and Their Fathers, Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies — the New Mafia, and Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, author Trisha Posner.

Patricia Posner is a British-born writer who has collaborated with her husband, the author Gerald Posner, on twelve non-fiction books, including Mengele: The Complete Story — a biography of Dr. Josef Mengele; Hitler’s Children — a 1991 collection of interviews with the children of Nazi perpetrators; and most recently, God’s Bankers — a financial history of the Roman Catholic Church. Her work has appeared, among other places, in the Miami Herald, The Daily Beast and Salon. She lives in Miami Beach. Her book, The Pharmacist of Auschwitz, is the little known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Romania who, at the age of 35, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Based in part on previously classified documents, Patricia Posner exposes Capesius’s reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, fueled in part by his theft of gold ripped from the mouths of corpses, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder twenty years after the end of the war.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss338_David_Brin_2023_04_03.mp3Download MP3Shermer and physicist, science fiction author, and AI expert David Brin discuss:

• What are AI and AGI?
• the alignment problem
• Large Language Models
• ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5, and beyond
• The Future of Life Institute’s Open Letter calling for a pause on “giant AI experiments”
• Asilomar AI principles: “Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.”
• Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?
• The goal of AI research should be to create not undirected intelligence, but beneficial intelligence.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Time OpEd: “Shut it All Down”
• “Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in ‘maybe possibly some remote chance,’ but as in ‘that is the obvious thing that would happen.’ If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter.”
• How can we make future AI systems highly robust, so that they do what we want without malfunctioning or getting hacked?
• How can we grow our prosperity through automation while maintaining people’s resources and purpose?
• How can we update our legal systems to be more fair and efficient, to keep pace with AI, and to manage the risks associated with AI?
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?

David Brin earned a Bachelor’s degree in astronomy from Caltech, a Master’s in electrical engineering from UC San Diego, and a PhD in astronomy from UC San Diego. From 1983 to 1986 he was a postdoc research fellow at the California Space Institute at UC San Diego, where he also helped establish the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. An advisor to NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program, David appears frequently on shows such as Nova, The Universe and Life After People, speaking about science and future trends. His first non-fiction book, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy?, won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. His second nonfiction book is Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood. He is best known for his science fiction, for which he has won numerous major awards, including the Hugo, Locus, Campbell, and Nebula Awards. His novel The Postman was adapted into a feature film starring Kevin Costner. He even has a minor planet named after him: 5748 Davebrin. He has written a number of articles on Artificial Intelligence, most recently in response to the call for a moratorium on AI research by many leading AI researchers and scientists, which he titled “The Only Way Out of the AI Dilemma.” His website is davidbrin.com.

Five competitive accountability ‘arenas’Read David Brin’s “Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness.”

…This early version leaves out a Fifth Arena that actually makes the point even better… sports! No league or team would survive any given weekend without benefiting from tight regulation to keep cheating to a minimum, illustrating a core truth that also applies to the other four great competitive-creative arenas markets, democracy, courts and science….

…that competition only delivers its cornucopia of positive-sum benefits when there is both transparency and cooperatively created regulation to deter the age-old human curse of cheating. Cooperation and competition are essential partners, not opposites.)

This early version appeared as the lead article in the American Bar Association’s Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss337_Thomas_Hertog_2023_03_17.mp3Download MP3Perhaps 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 mystery, Hawking studied the Big Bang origin of the universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs producing a multiverse — countless different universes, most of which would be far too bizarre to harbor life. Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking and his friend and collaborator Thomas Hertog worked on this problem for twenty years, developing a new theory of the cosmos that could account for the emergence of life.

Shermer and Hertog discuss:

• what it was like working with Stephen Hawking
• why On the Origin of Time is Hawking’s last book, a sequel to The Grand Design
• replacing the multiverse with a Darwinian model of cosmology and grand cosmic design
• how Hawking thought about physics and cosmology
• What is time?
• What banged the Big Bang?
• cosmic inflation and multiple universes
• the problem to be solved: how to reconcile Einstein’s relativity theory of gravity and quantum theory
• Hawking’s no-boundary theory: “The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just be. … What place then for a creator?”
• why the universe appears designed (Hawking: “The anthropic principle is a counsel of despair. It is a negation of our hopes of understanding the underlying order of the universe, on the basis of science.”)
• The Anthropic Principle (weak, strong, and final)
• What are laws of nature and from where did they come?
• Is math all there is? Is math universal?
• Uniformitarianism and the laws of nature
• Chains of accidents and rules of laws
• Gould’s thought experiment of rewinding the tape of life and the universe
• Yuval Harari’s thought experiment on the rise of Christianity: “If we could rewind history and replay the fourth century a hundred times, we’d find that Christianity will have taken over the Roman empire a few times only.”
• Simon Conway Morris: convergent evolution
• Double-slit experiment and what it means
• Feynman’s sum over histories approach to quantum physics
• God’s-eye view of the universe and scientific experiments in the lab
• Hawking: “The history of the universe depends on the question you ask.”
• Steven Weinberg: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
• Is there a place for God in scientific epistemology?
• mysteries are to be embraced, but also to be solved
• laws of nature: discovered or created or both?
• Is there purpose in the cosmos?
• Why is there something rather than nothing?

Thomas Hertog is an internationally renowned cosmologist who was for many years a close collaborator of the late Stephen Hawking. He received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge and is currently professor of theoretical physics at the University of Leuven, where he studies the quantum nature of the Big Bang. He lives with his wife and their four children in Bousval, Belgium.

About the BookPeering into the extreme quantum physics of cosmic holograms and venturing far back in time to our deepest roots, they were startled to find a deeper level of evolution in which the physical laws themselves transform and simplify until particles, forces, and even time itself fades away. This discovery led them to a revolutionary idea: the laws of physics are not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as the universe they govern takes shape. As Hawking’s final days drew near, the two collaborators published their theory, which proposed a radical new Darwinian perspective on the origins of our universe.

On the Origin of Time offers a striking new vision of the universe’s birth that will profoundly transform the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may ultimately prove to be Hawking’s greatest legacy.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss336_Ursula_Goodenough_2023_03_14.mp3Download MP3For 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 The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope.

Shermer and Goodenough discuss:

• origins of her personal beliefs
• Loyal Rue’s Everybody’s Story
• myths and religions
• What does it mean to be “religious”?
• What is a religious naturalist?
• The point is the mystery:
  • why there is anything at all, rather than nothing
  • where the laws of physics came from
  • why the universe seems so strange
• origin of life
• origin of RNA and DNA
• origin of consciousness
• origin of language
• origins of morality
• chance and evolution
• fine tuning of the cosmos
• autocatalysis and emergence
• the self and free will
• why people believe in God
• purpose of religion
• ethics and morality, right and wrong, without religion
• Terrence Deacon: “Biologically, we are just another ape. Mentally, we are a new phylum of organism.”

Ursula Goodenough is Professor Emerita of Biology at Washington University. One of America’s leading cell biologists, she is the author of a bestselling textbook on genetics, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard. Her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, is now in a second edition. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association.

About the BookThis eloquent volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for reverence and continuity. Looking at topics such as evolution, emotions, sexuality, and death, Goodenough writes with rich, uncluttered detail about the workings of nature in general and of living creatures in particular. Her luminous clarity makes it possible for even non-scientists to appreciate that the origins of life and the universe are no less meaningful because of our increasingly scientific understanding of them. At the end of each chapter, Goodenough’s spiritual reflections respond to the complexity of nature with vibrant emotional intensity and a sense of reverent wonder. This new edition offers a deepened consideration of emergent properties and emergent dynamics, as well as an exploration of their role as the generators of life’s complexity. Goodenough also expands upon the ethic of ecomorality in a new chapter, and incorporates new quotes, figures, and poems in her analysis.

A beautifully written celebration of molecular biology with meditations on the spiritual and religious meaning that can be found at the heart of science, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing dialog between science and religion. This book will engage anyone who was ever mesmerized — or terrified — by the mysteries of existence.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss335_Jennifer_Michael_Hecht_2023_03_09.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Hecht discuss: awe and wonder • science and religion • the new atheists • humanism and atheism • secular Judaism • replacing religion, with what? • the original meaning of liturgy and why it’s still important • rituals for atheists • how to cope with loss, death, and grief • what to say at weddings and funerals • Alvy’s Error (the universe is expanding but Brooklyn is not) • what we do in the hear-and-now matters, whether or not there is a hereafter (which there probably isn’t) • love.

Jennifer Michael Hecht, a historian and poet, is the award-winning and bestselling author of the histories Doubt, Stay, The Happiness Myth, and The End of the Soul. Her poetry books include Who Said, The Next Ancient World, and Funny. She earned her PhD in history from Columbia University and teaches in New York City. Her new book is The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives.

About the BookWe 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 right way to live ― in kindness, justice, morality. These rhythms and structures of society were all once set by religion. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show.

So how then to celebrate milestones? Find rules to guide us? Figure out which texts can focus our attention but still offer space for inquiry, communion, and the chance to dwell for a dazzling instant in what can’t be said? Where, really, are truth and beauty? The answer, says historian and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht in her new book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives, is in poetry.

In twenty chapters built from years of questions and conversations with those looking for an authentic and meaningful life, Jennifer Michael Hecht offers ways to mine and adapt the useful aspects of tradition and to replace what no longer feels true. Through cultures and poetic wisdom from around the world ― Sappho, Rumi, Shakespeare, Issa, Tagore, Frost, Szymborska, Angelou, and others ― she blends literary criticism with spiritual guidance rooted in the everyday. Linking our needs to particular poems, she helps us better understand those needs, our very being, and poetry itself.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss334_Bart_Ehrman_2023_02_14.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Ehrman discuss:

• Ehrman’s religious journey
• Who wrote the Bible and why?
• how to read the Bible and the book of Revelation
• Who wrote Revelation and why?
• violence in the book of Revelation
• why Jesus spoke in parables
• What did Jesus mean when he said “there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 9:1)
• “Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)
• a history of false predictions of the end of the world
• Real-Life Consequences of the Imminent Apocalypse (why worry about climate change if the world is going to end soon?)
• Millerites and the Great Disappointment
• David Koresh and Waco
• Reagan and end times politics
• how Jesus became a capitalist and militarist
• the social gospel vs. the prosperity gospel
• faith healers, televangelists, and other Christian con artists
• Christian ethics and what Jesus really said about the poor and needy.

Bart D. Ehrman is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity and a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of six New York Times bestsellers, he has written or edited more than thirty books, including Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, The Triumph of Christianity, Did Jesus Exist?, God’s Problem, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, and Heaven and Hell. Ehrman has also created nine popular audio and video courses for The Great Courses. His books have been translated into 27 languages, with over two million copies and courses sold. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End.

About the BookYou’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 contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But whether you understand the book as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture, what you think Revelation reveals…is almost certainly wrong.

In Armageddon, acclaimed New Testament authority Bart D. Ehrman delves into the most misunderstood — and possibly the most dangerous — book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse and offering a fascinating tour through three millennia of Judeo-Christian thinking about how our world will end. By turns hilarious, moving, troubling, and provocative, Armageddon presents inspiring insights into how to live our lives in the face of an uncertain future and reveals what the Bible really says about the end.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss333_Kevin_Kelly_2023_03_16.mp3Download MP3On 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 than he thought, and kept adding to the advice over the years, compiling a life’s wisdom into the pages of his book: Excellent Advice for Living.

Shermer and Kelly discuss:

• protopian progress (one step at a time)
• ChatGPT
• artificial intelligence and natural intelligence
• Is evolution progressive?
• Is cultural progress real?
• AI as an existential threat
• self-driving cars
• creativity and innovation
• social media and what to do about it
• how humanity can put an end to war
• compound interest and the long term effect of small changes
• why you don’t want to be a billionaire
• money and happiness
• why money is overrated
• reasoning people out of beliefs they didn’t reason their way into
• setting unreasonable goals
• persistence as the key to success
• what might not be true 100 years from now
• study probabilities and statistics, not algebra and calculus
• investing: buy and hold
• getting cheated occasionally is ok
• how to fully become yourself.

Kevin Kelly helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. His previous books include What Technology Wants, and The Inevitable, a New York Times bestseller. He is known for his technological optimism. Currently he is a Senior Maverick at Wired and lives in Pacifica, California.

About the BookKelly’s timeless advice covers an astonishing range, from right living to setting ambitious goals, optimizing generosity, and cultivating compassion. He has wisdom for career, relationships, parenting, and finances, and gives guidance for practical matters ranging from travel to troubleshooting. Excellent Advice for Living is aimed primarily at young people, but speaks to all ages. This is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to navigate life with grace and creativity.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss332_Amanda_Knox_2023_03_07.mp3Download MP3Amanda 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 when her roommate was murdered in their apartment. After a controversial trial, Amanda was convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, an appeals court overturned the decision and vacated the murder charge. Free at last, she returned home to the U.S., where she remained silent until she released the memoir of her ordeal, Waiting to Be Heard. Unfortunately, after the publication of her book she was tried and convicted again in an Italian court, only to see that conviction overturned by the Italian Supreme Court. She cannot be tried again, but in the court of public opinion she has been on trial since that fatal day in 2007. Here she shares with listeners her story and all she has learned from her experiences and what lessons we can all take from adversity.

Read about cognitive biases in the courtroom.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss331_Paul_Zak_2023_02_17.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Zak discuss:

• What are neuroeconomics, neuromanagement, and neuromarketing?
• Zak’s work with the CIA and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
• What is immersion and how is it quantified (with a formula)?
• monotony of the mundane
• ordinary and extraordinary
• storytelling and immersion
• peak-end stories and immersion
• advertising/commercials immersion
• entertainment immersion
• education immersion
• attractions immersion
• retail immersion
• what makes a great movie and movie trailer
• what makes successful unscripted TV shows
• novelty
• sensitivity training programs in universities and corporations
• how to give a TED talk
• immersion and political candidates
• marriage and immersion
• The Bachelor: Ben’s season
• happiness, flourishing, meaningfulness, purposefulness and immersion.

Paul Zak is a professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University. He is ranked in the top 0.3 percent of most-cited scientists with over 170 published papers and more than 18,000 citations. He helped start several interdisciplinary fields, including neuroeconomics, neuromanagement, and neuromarketing. Paul is a regular TED speaker, four-time tech entrepreneur, and corporate consultant. He frequently appears in the media, including Good Morning America, the BBC, NBC’s The Today Show, CNN, and Fox & Friends. His groundbreaking research has been reported in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, The Economist, Scientific American, Forbes, and many other publications.

About the BookNo one raves about boring movies, bland customer service experiences, or sleep-inducing classes. The world is rapidly transforming into an experience economy as people increasingly crave extraordinary experiences. Experience designers, marketers, entertainment producers, and retailers have long sought to fill this craving. Now, there’s a scientific formula to consistently create extraordinary experiences. The data show that those who use this formula increase the impact of experiences tenfold.

Creating the extraordinary used to be extraordinarily hard. Immersion offers a framework for transforming nearly any situation from ordinary to extraordinary. Based on twenty years of neuroscience research from his lab and innumerable client applications, Paul Zak explains why brains crave the extraordinary. Clear instructions and examples show listeners and readers exactly how to create amazing experiences for customers, prospects, employees, audiences, and learners.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss330_Jim_Davies_2023_02_07.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Davies discuss:

• an operational definition of the “good life” or “happiness” or “well being”
• religion, happiness, and the good life
• morality: What is actually right and wrong
• utilitarianism vs. deontology vs. virtue ethics
• effective altruism
• marriage and children
• happiness vs. meaningfulness/purposefulness
• the value of a human life (Worth, Michael Keaton/Kenneth Feinberg 9/11 victim fund)
• objective moral values
• Do we have a moral obligation to help those who cannot help themselves?
• Does America have a moral obligation to help oppressed peoples in dictatorships?
• the Is-Ought problem of determining right and wrong in some objective manner
• immigration, abortion, the welfare state, prostitution
• reparations: what do we owe others?

Jim Davies is a full professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University and the School of Computer Science. He is the director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory and he co-hosts, along with Dr. Kim Hellemans, the podcast Minding the Brain. He is the author of Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe; Imagination: The Science of Your Mind’s Greatest Power, and his new book Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

About the BookWhy do we feel like in order to be productive, happy, or good, we must sacrifice everything else? Is it possible to feel all three at once? Without even knowing it, we’re doing things everyday to sabotage ourselves and our societies, habits that prevent us from optimizing long term happiness. Where most books imagine solutions that, when enacted, fail to fundamentally improve our lives, Jim Davies grounds his research in cognitive science to show you not only what works, but how much it works. Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are shows us how we can use science to become our best selves, using resources we already have within our own brains.

Davies challenges and inspires us to approach the big picture while also staying mindful of the everyday details in real life. Davies proves why multitasking is bad for you, when a little unmindfulness can be good for you, how to best justify which charities to donate to, and how to hack your brain. The most surprising truth Davies offers us spreads across these pages like wildfire: you too can lead an optimally good life, not through uprooting your life from the ground up, but from adapting your mentality to your given present. A better life doesn’t need to look like a massive change — like our beloved dogs who already view us as our best selves, it’s already much closer than you think.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss329_Marc_Schulz_2023_01_31.mp3Download MP3Marc Schulz is the associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and the Sue Kardas PhD 1971 Chair in Psychology at Bryn Mawr College. He also directs the Data Science Program and previously chaired the psychology department and Clinical Developmental Psychology PhD program at Bryn Mawr. Dr. Schulz received his BA from Amherst College and his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a practicing therapist with postdoctoral training in health and clinical psychology at Harvard Medical School. His new book, co-authored with Robert Waldinger, is The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.

Shermer and Schulz discuss:

• an operational definition of the “good life” or “happiness” or “well being”
• the reliability (or unreliability) of self-report data in social science
• relative roles of genes, environment, hard work, and luck in how lives turn out
• personality and to what extent it can be scientifically measured and studied
• Big Five personality dimensions
• factors in early childhood that shape mental health in mid and late life
• changing perceptions of life throughout the lifespan
• generational differences:
  • Lost Generation (born 1883–1900)
  • G.I. Generation (born 1901–1924)
  • Silent Generation (born 1925–1942)
  • Baby Boomers (born 1943–1963)
  • Generation X (born 1964–1980)
  • Millennials (born 1981–1994)
  • Generation Z/iGen (born 1995–2010)
• loneliness increases your risk of death as much as smoking or obesity
• a good life is not found by providing ourselves with ease. Rather it arises from the act of facing inevitable challenges and from fully inhabiting the moments of our lives
• the most common misconceptions about happiness
• what social fitness is and how to exercise it
• what most people get wrong about achievement
• the first step you can take if you want to live a good life
• how much of happiness is under our control
• money and happiness
• religion, happiness, and the good life
• colleagues at work
• friends outside of work
• love and marriage
• emotions
• adversity, alcohol, abuse, and the bad life
• WISER (Watch, Interpret, Select, Engage, Reflect) model of reacting to emotionally challenging situations
• WISER applied to restorative justice.

About the BookWhat makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.

The invaluable insights in this book emerge from the revealing personal stories of hundreds of participants in the Harvard Study as they were followed year after year for their entire adult lives, and this wisdom is bolstered by research findings from this and many other studies. Relationships in all their forms — friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers, tennis partners, book club members, Bible study groups — all contribute to a happier, healthier life. And as The Good Life shows us, it’s never too late to strengthen the relationships you have, and never too late to build new ones.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss328_Paul_Bloom_2023_02_08.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Bloom discuss:

• Brain. What do findings from neuroscience tell us about human nature? How do they challenge core religious notions, such as the idea of a soul?
• Consciousness. What do we really know about perhaps the biggest mystery of all?
• Freud. Does sex really matter as much as he thought? How much of Freud should we take seriously?
• Skinner. Is it all reinforcement and punishment? How similar are we to rats in a cage?
• Development. How much do babies know? What’s the real difference between the minds of children and the minds of adults?
• Language. Does the language you speak influence how you think?
• Perception and memory. Anaïs Nin once said that we don’t see things as they are — we see them as we are. Was she right? And can we trust our memories? How much is repressed — and how much is false?
• Rationality. Are we really, as Aristotle put it, the rational animal?
• Appetites. Which sexual desires do all humans share, and what differs across societies and between men and women?
• Our social selves. How do we form impressions of others?
• Differences. Why do we differ in our intelligence and personality? How much is genes; how much is experience?
• Disorders. Why do some people suffer from illnesses like depression and schizophrenia, and what can be done to help them?
• The good life. What have psychologists learned about the secrets of happiness?

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores the psychology of morality, identity, and pleasure. Bloom is the recipient of multiple awards and honors, including, most recently, the million-dollar Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic Monthly. He is the author or editor of eight books, including Against Empathy, Just Babies, How Pleasure Works, Descartes’ Baby, The Sweet Spot, and Psych: The Story of the Human Mind.

About the BookHow does the brain — a three-pound gelatinous mass — give rise to intelligence and conscious experience? Was Freud right that we are all plagued by forbidden sexual desires? What is the function of emotions such as disgust, gratitude, and shame? Renowned psychologist Paul Bloom answers these questions and many more in Psych, his riveting new book about the science of the mind.

Bloom is an expert and passionate guide to the most intimate aspects of our nature, serving up the equivalent of a serious university course while being funny, engaging, and full of memorable anecdotes. But Psych is much more than a comprehensive overview of the field of psychology. Bloom reveals what psychology can tell us about the most pressing moral and political issues of our time — including belief in conspiracy theories, the role of genes in explaining human differences, and the nature of prejudice and hatred.

Bloom also shows how psychology can give us practical insights into important issues — from the treatment of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety to the best way to lead happy and fulfilling lives.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss327_Rachel_Moran_2023_01_26.mp3Download MP3Rachel Moran is the Director of International Policy and Advocacy for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE, a leading non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography). Her work has been endorsed by Jane Fonda, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and many others. Her bestselling memoir, Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution, is regarded by legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon as “the best work by anyone on prostitution ever” and has been published in more than a dozen countries and numerous languages including German, Italian, Korean, French, and Spanish. Ms. Moran was prostituted for seven years in Dublin and across Ireland, beginning when she was 15 years old. She later completed her education and received a degree in Journalism from Dublin City University and a Masters in Creative Writing from University College Dublin. As an abolitionist, Ms. Moran was instrumental in bringing the Abolitionist (Nordic) Model to Ireland in two separate processes on either side of the Irish border, and works centrally within the international survivors movement, which calls for the implementation of the Abolitionist Model worldwide. She has spoken at the United Nations, the European Parliament, Westminster Parliament and many other global institutions and prominent places of learning. Read more about her work here, here, and here.

“The reality of prostitution has been hiding in plain sight for millennia. We all know it, instinctively. That’s why we don’t want our sisters and daughters and mothers in brothels. It’s strange how something we know on a sensory level can elude us intellectually. The reality of prostitution is not complex, it is simple. Controlling what people do sexually is inherently abusive.” —Rachel Moran

Shermer and Moran discuss:

• her dysfunctional family background that led to prostitution
• her boyfriend who pimped her
• Who are the women who sell sex?
• Who are the men who buy sex?
• why other prostitutes have attacked her
• agency and volition in prostitution: women and men
• why “prostituted” as something done to women (instead of choosing it)?
• what she thought about when having prostituted sex
• drugs, depression, and suicide as responses to prostitution
• the myth of prostitutes’ sexual pleasure
• the myth of prostitutes’ control
• the myth of the happy hooker
• the myth of women putting themselves through college through prostitution
• virtual sex, phone sex, cyber sex, cam sex, etc. (OnlyFans and other sites)
• feminism and prostitution
• Liberal vs. Conservative attitudes about prostitution and pornography
• Do prostitution and pornography lower moral standards and/or degrade neighborhoods and societies?
• why Moran thinks “sex work” and “sex workers” are bad euphemisms for “prostitution” and “prostitutes” that hide the true abusive nature of the practice
• how she got out of prostitution
• What’s the harm in consenting adult women selling their bodies for sex?
• What about men who cannot get sex otherwise and need to pay for it (incels, disabled)?
• What should be done about prostitution, if anything? What is the long-term goal?
• ethical issues: victimhood, freedom of choice, general benefit or harm to society
• proposed responses to prostitution (for buyers, sellers, and/or distributors): criminalize, decriminalize, legalize and regulate.

Show NotesAnthropologist Alan Fiske’s model of four types of human relationships:

1. Communal Sharing: Relatives, couples, marriage, families, friends—freely share resources within a group, no tab keeping, egalitarian, “one flesh” common essence, no contamination, evolved: maternal care, kin selection, mutualism
2. Authority Ranking: Employer/Employee, Teacher/Student, Parent/Child—linear hierarchy, dominance, status, age, size, strength, wealth, precedence, tribute from inferiors, obedience, paternalistic, noblesse oblige; evolved: hierarchical primates
3. Equality Matching: Friends splitting gas, informal exchanges. Marriage? Tit-for-tat reciprocity, division of resources equitably via turn-taking, coin-flipping, matching contributions, cut and divide cake equally; evolve: fairness & reciprocity, intuitive economics, cheating detection, perspective taking & calculation
4. Market Pricing: Economy of strangers, money is the social currency of exchange and reciprocity—currency, prices, rents, salaries, benefits, interest, credit; evolve: none

Violations of Fiske’s 4 Models:

• Restaurant diner invites owner to dinner instead of paying
• Dinner guest offers to pay host
• Woody Allen’s watch/my neighbor’s car
• Organ sale
• Roads: Public vs. Private
• Sex between Employer & Employee, Teacher & Student, Parent & Child
• Prostitution: Sex is usually within communal sharing or equality matching, not market pricing.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss326_Naomi_Oreskes_2023_02_18.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Oreskes discuss:

• What is a myth?
• market fundamentalism/market absolutism/market essentialism
• What is the myth of market magic?
• capitalism (economic system) and democracy (political system): democracy vs. tyranny, well-regulated capitalism vs. poorly regulated capitalism
• the U.S. Constitution and capitalism
• the early republic and what the founding fathers believed about markets
• what Adam Smith really said about markets and capitalism
• how economists rewrote Adam Smith and purged his theory of any role for government regulation of capitalism
• why markets need regulation in the same way sports need rules and referees
• rhetorical fallacies of market fundamentalists: slippery-slope, ad hominem, straw man, half truths, misrepresentations, denial of documented evidence, outright lies
• Keating-Owen and child labor laws
• 19th century factory conditions: William Blake’s “dark Satanic Mills”
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, mine collapses, RR accidents etc.
• electricity markets
• The Great Depression and the New Deal
• banking and bank failures — Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, Theodore Roosevelt trust-buster
• Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie
• Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman
• religion and capitalism: Billy Graham, Normal Vincent Peale
• General Electric Theater, Ronald Reagan
• Conservative Think Tanks, Libertarian Think Tanks
• collective action problems and how they are solved in the real world.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. Her TED talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” was viewed more than a million times. Erik M. Conway is a historian of science and technology and works for the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of seven books and dozens of articles and essays. Their new book is The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.

About the BookIn their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, they unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma: the “magic of the marketplace,” namely, the myth that free market capitalism can solve any and all social problems.

In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with “big government” and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names; recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books; and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagan’s political career.

By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate destruction, and a baleful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.

Note: Oreskes and Conway are not making the case for socialism or communism; rather, they make the case for regulated markets.

Notes on Adam Smith from Dr. Shermer’s 2008 book The Mind of the MarketIt should be clear by now that Adam Smith was anything but blindly pro-business, as the myth shrouding his legacy would have us believe. Adam Smith was, in fact, quite skeptical of the base motives of producers. Throughout The Wealth of Nations, Smith criticized “factions”—groups of politically connected businessmen, bankers, tradesmen, and industrialists who turned to the government to do their bidding—because their formation constituted a power bloc that would serve the special interests of producers rather than the general interests of consumers: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”1

Also contrary to myth, Smith did not argue that self-interest is always good. He believed that self-interest is a part of human nature (along with empathy and other pro-social sentiments) and is therefore not necessarily bad. But he never pulled his punches against those whom he perceived acted out of excessive greed and avarice, observing that “We are not ready to suspect any person of being defective in selfishness,” and warning that “all for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

We must read both A Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s theory holds that we have both virtues and vices, which interact and feed on one another, and whose relative expression depends on the social context. Mutually beneficial free exchange environments produce cooperativeness even while each party may be motivated by competitiveness. As long as there is no fraud or coercion in the exchange, buyers and sellers both win when they agree upon the reciprocally advantageous terms of the trade. The buyer selfishly values the seller’s product more than he does his money, and the seller greedily values the buyer’s money more than he does his product. As Smith explained in one of the most famous passages in The Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”2

By allowing people to follow their natural inclination to pursue their self-love, the country as a whole will prosper as a result, almost as if the entire system were being directed by a magical force. It is here where we find the one and only use in The Wealth of Nations of the most famous metaphor in Western thought:

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. … He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

Smith was, in fact, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow where he taught courses in jurisprudence, ethics, rhetoric, and political economy. His first major work was A Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, in which he laid the foundation for the theory that we have an innate sense of morality, as he explained in the opening sentences: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.”

We sense someone else’s joy or agony through empathy—by putting ourselves in their shoes and imagining how we would feel: “As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.”3 Out of our empathic nature comes the basis of a civil society—as we endeavor to assuage the distress we feel at others’ distress, we attenuate our negative emotions and accentuate our positive passions:

Upon these two different efforts, upon that of the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person principally concerned, and upon that of the person principally concerned, to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with, are founded two different sets of virtues. The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of candid condescension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the one: the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other.4

A Theory of Moral Sentiments was followed in 1776 with Smith’s treatise on political economy which, in its full title, reveals it to be a grand work of science: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was one long argument against the mercantilist system of protectionism and special privilege that in the short run may benefit producers but which in the long run harms consumers and thereby decreases the wealth of a nation. All such mercantilist practices benefit the producers, monopolists, and their government agents, while the people of the nation—the true source of a nation’s wealth—remain impoverished: “The wealth of a country consists, not of its gold and silver only, but in its lands, houses, and consumable goods of all different kinds.” Yet, “in the mercantile system, the interest of the consumer is almost always constantly sacrificed to that of the producer.”5

The solution? Hands off. Laissez Faire. Lift trade barriers and other restrictions on people’s economic freedoms and allow them to exchange as they see fit for themselves, both morally and practically. In other words, an economy should be consumer driven, not producer driven. For example, under the mercantilist zero-sum philosophy, cheaper foreign goods benefit consumers but they hurt domestic producers, so the government should impose protective trade tariffs to maintain the favorable balance of trade. But who is being protected by a protective tariff? Smith showed that, in principle, the mercantilist system only benefits a handful of producers while the great majority of consumers are further impoverished because they have to pay a higher price for foreign goods.

The growing of grapes in France, Smith noted, is much cheaper and more efficient than in the colder climes of home, for example, where “by means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland” but at a price thirty times greater than in France. “Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?” Smith answered the question by invoking a deeper principle: “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them.”6

This is the central core of Smith’s economic theory: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” The problem is that the system of mercantilism “seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.”

Even that icon of free market capitalism, President Ronald Reagan, compromised his principles in 1982 to protect the Harley-Davidson Motor Company when it was struggling to compete against Japanese motorcycle manufactures that were producing higher quality bikes at lower prices. Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki were routinely undercutting Harley-Davidson by $1500 to $2000 a bike in comparable models. A true defender of free market economics would have cheered this spectacular savings to American consumers. After all, what difference does it make to consumers who produces the products that they want? But on January 19, 1983, the International Trade Commission ruled that foreign motorcycle imports were a threat to domestic motorcycle manufacturers, and a 2-to-1 finding of injury was ruled on petition by Harley-Davidson, which complained that it could not compete with foreign motorcycle producers.7

On April 1, Reagan approved the ITC recommendation, explaining to Congress, “I have determined that import relief in this case is consistent with our national economic interest,” thereby raising the current tariff of 4.4 percent to 49.4 percent for a year, a ten-fold tax increase on foreign motorcycles that would have to be absorbed by American consumers. The protective tariff worked to help Harley-Davidson recover financially, but it was American motorcycle consumers who paid the price, not Japanese producers. As the ITC Chairman Alfred E. Eckes explained about his decision: “In the short run, price increases may have some adverse impact on consumers, but the domestic industry’s adjustment will have a positive long-term effect. The proposed relief will save domestic jobs and lead to increased domestic production of competitive motorcycles.”

References1. Smith, 1776, Book 1, Chapter 10. 2. Ibid., 14. 3. Smith, Adam. 1759. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. London: A. Millar, I.I.1. 4. Ibid., I.I.40. 5. Ibid., 625. 6. Ibid., 424. 7. AP Wire Story. 1983. “Motorcycle Imports Cited.” New York Times, January 20, If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

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“From all things One and from One all things” —Heraclitus

Heinrich Päs is a professor of theoretical physics at TU Dortmund University in Germany. He has held positions at Vanderbilt University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Hawai’i and has conducted research visits at CERN and Fermilab. He lives in Bremen, Germany. His new book is The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics.

Shermer and Päs discuss:

• monism vs. dualism
• What is time?
• Is math all there is? Is math universal?
• the double-slit experiment
• superposition
• What is a field?
• metaphors in science: world as machine, world as alive
• limitations of models and theories of reality
• limitations of analogies between western physics and eastern mysticism
• The Tao of Physics and other connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism
• What banged the Big Bang?
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Are we living in a matrix?
• the Second Laws of Thermodynamics and directionality in nature
• If everything runs down how did any complexity form after the Big Bang?
• laws of nature: discovered or created or both?
• Is the universe mathematical?
• Model Dependent Realism and the nature of reality
• consciousness and self-awareness as emergent properties
• Is there purpose in the cosmos?
• Is there a place for God in scientific epistemology?
• The “fine-tuning” of the universe and Intelligent Design creationism
• mysterian mysteries: are there things we can never know, even in principle? String theory, the multiverse, consciousness, the origin of the universe, and why there is something rather than nothing: are these soluble problems?

About the BookIn his new book, The One, particle physicist Heinrich Päs presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole. The idea, called monism, has a rich three-thousand-year history: Plato believed that “all is one” before monism was rejected as irrational and suppressed as a heresy by the medieval Church. Nevertheless, monism persisted, inspiring Enlightenment science and Romantic poetry. Päs aims to show how monism could inspire physics today, how it could slice through the intellectual stagnation that has bogged down progress in modern physics and help the field achieve the grand theory of everything it has been chasing for decades.

Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself.

Show NotesAlbert Einstein on the death of his friend Michele Besso in a letter to the family:

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one.

Sir Martin Rees’s Just Six Numbers1. Ω (omega), the amount of matter in the universe = 1: if Ω were greater than 1, it would have collapsed long ago, and, if Ω were less than 1, no galaxies would have formed. 2. ε (epsilon), how firmly atomic nuclei bind together = 0.007: if ε were even fractionally different, matter could not exist. 3. D, the number of dimensions in which we live = 3. 4. N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to that of gravity = 1039: if N were smaller, the universe would be either too young or too small for life to form. 5. Q, the fabric of the universe = 1/100,000: if Q were smaller, the universe would be featureless, and, if Q were larger, the universe would be dominated by giant black holes. 6. λ (lambda), the cosmological constant, or “antigravity” force that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate = 0.7: if λ were larger, it would have prevented stars and galaxies from forming

Why is there Something Rather Than Nothing?From Michael Shermer’s essay of this title in Giving the Devil His Due:

Nothing is Inconceivable.
The argument that asks why there is something rather than nothing underlies all the other arguments, and is cognitively challenging because it is simply not possible for existing beings to imagine not existing — not just themselves existing (which forms the cognitive foundation of afterlife beliefs), but to imagine nothing existing at all. Go ahead and try it. Picture nothing. When I ask myself this question I start by visualizing dark empty space bereft of galaxies, stars, and planets, along with molecules and atoms. But this picture is incorrect because if there were no universe there would not only be no matter, but there would be no space or time (or space-time) either. There would be absolutely nothing, including no conscious being to observe the nothingness. Just…nothing. Whatever that is.

First, as suggested above, it is impossible to conceptualize nothing — no space, time, matter, light, darkness, or even any conscious beings to perceive the nothingness. As Robert Kuhn conceives it: “Not just emptiness, not just blankness, and not just emptiness and blankness forever, but not even the existence of emptiness, not even the meaning of blankness, and no forever.”1 Inconceivable.

Nothing is Something.
The analytical philosopher Quentin Smith pointed out to Kuhn that it is a logical fallacy to talk about “nothing” as if it were “something”; that is, to suggest that “there might have been nothing” implies “it is possible that there is nothing.” As Kuhn articulates Smith’s argument: “‘There is’ means ‘something is.’ So ‘there is nothing’ means ‘something is nothing,’ which is a logical contradiction.

Nothing Would Include God’s Nonexistence.
In Kuhn’s taxonomy of “nothings” he lists what categories of things might be included in “something” that would be negated by “nothing”: physical, mental, platonic, spiritual, and God. Physical: all matter, energy, space and time, and all the laws and principles that govern them (known and unknown). Mental: all kinds of consciousness and awareness (known and unknown). Platonic: all forms of abstract objects (numbers, logic, forms, propositions, possibilities — known and unknown). Spiritual and God: anything that could possibly fit this nonphysical category (all forms of religious and spiritual belief).2 If by “nothing” is meant no physical objects or matter of any kind, for example, there can still be energy from which matter may arise by natural forces guided by the laws of nature. Physicists, for example, talk about empty space as seething with virtual particles, from which particle-antiparticle pairs come into existence as a consequence of the uncertainty principle of quantum physics. From this “nothingness” universes may “pop” into existence.3

But if by “nothing” is meant that there is no physical, mental, platonic, or nonphysical entity of any kind, then there can be no God or gods, which means that there cannot be anything outside of nothing out of which to create something. If God is proposed to be outside of or preexisting the “nothing” from which the “something” was created, then why can’t the laws of nature that give rise to “somethings” (like universes) be outside of or preexisting nothing?

References1. Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. 2007. “Why This Universe?: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations.” Skeptic, Vol. 13, No. 2, 28–39. 2. Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. 2013. “Levels of Nothing: There Are Multiple Answers to the Question of Why the Universe Exists.” Skeptic, Vol. 18, No. 2. http://bit.ly/1S7Mn9i 3. Vilenkin, Alex. 2006. Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. New York: Hill and Wang. If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss324_Andrew_Gold_2022_12_08.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Gold discuss: diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media • social justice movements and their motivations • bias in STEM fields • why people believe weird things • exorcism • UFOs • faith healers • Derren Brown and how magic works on minds • hypnosis • sex and where to have an affair • Ashley Madison • female/male differences in sexual preferences and choices • non-offending pedophiles in Berlin • the curious case of Jimmy Seville: why didn’t anyone notice his pedophilia?

Andrew Gold is a British journalist whose podcast On the Edge with Andrew Gold investigates belief, cults and extreme ideologies. He speaks five languages, has lived in six countries and has made award-winning documentaries around the world for the BBC and HBO about fringe topics, from exorcism and UFOs to abortion and porn stars, and even more controversial terrain, such as his two years investigating pedophiles. On his podcast he has interviewed Richard Dawkins, Amanda Knox, John McWhorter, Gad Saad, Peter Boghossian, Robbie Williams and that Shermer guy…as well as several psychopaths, murderers, cult defectors and a guy who had to eat his friends after a plane crash. The reason he started his podcast is because the UK TV producers who work with the BBC kept insisting that he no longer be visible on-screen in his films because, he was told, they needed “a minority.” Watch his TV reel.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss323_Elle_Hardy_2023_01_09.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Hardy discuss:

• Hardy’s own religious journey (raised Catholic, now agnostic)
• origin of Pentecostalism (a white preacher named Charles Fox Parham, a Black son of freed slaves named William J. Seymour, and a female preacher, Aimee Semple McPherson)
• biblical basis of Pentecostalism
• Pentecostalism in Korea North and South
• Pentecostalism and Israel (“ultimately, in the end times, they believe that the Jews must convert to Christianity or burn in hell.”)
• the structure of the Pentecostal church and how it differs from other churches
• New Apostolic Reformation
• the rise of the nones (no religious affiliation) in the context of the decline of evangelicalism but the rise of Pentecostalism
• Seven Mountain Mandate: bringing about the end of the world & second coming (7 spheres: education, religion, family, business, government, A&E, media) Lord’s Prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
• what purpose Pentecostalism serves in communities and societies
• witnessing for Pentecostalism and how religions grow
• pentecostalism and politics
• the psychology of the believer in a Pentecostal church
• Trinity in Pentecostalism: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
• dispensationalism and the Rapture
• the Jews killed Jesus libel: Christianity and Anti-Semitism
• replacement theology: Christians replaced Jews as the “chosen people”
• prophecy
• talking in tongues/glossolalia
• snake handling
• eschatology and end-times theology
• sin and redemption
• pentecostalism and prostitution
• what people need that religion fulfills
• Jordan Peterson and secular religion
• the nature of Pentecostalism and how it differs from other faiths.

Elle Hardy is a journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported from the United States, the former USSR and North Korea, among a long list of places. Her work has appeared in GQ, Lonely Planet, Foreign Policy and Business Insider, and on ABC Australia. Her new book is Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World.

About the BookHow has a Christian movement, founded at the turn of the twentieth century by the son of freed slaves, become the fastest-growing religion on Earth? Pentecostalism has 600 million followers; if that trend continues then by 2050 they’ll be one in ten people worldwide. This is the religion of the Holy Spirit, with believers directly experiencing God and His blessings — success for the mind, body, spirit and wallet.

Pentecostalism is a social movement. It serves impoverished people in Africa and Latin America, and inspires anti-establishment leaders from Trump to Bolsonaro. In Australia, Europe and Korea, it throws itself into culture wars and social media, offering meaning and community to the rootless and marginalized in a fragmenting world.

Reporting this revolution from twelve countries and six US states, Elle Hardy weaves a timeless tale of miracles, money and power, set in our volatile age of extremes. By turns troubling and entertaining, Beyond Belief exposes the Pentecostal agenda: not just saving souls, but transforming societies and controlling politics. These modern prophets, embedded in our institutions, have the cash and the influence to wage their holy war.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss322_Marty_Klein_2023_01_17.mp3Download MP3Marty Klein has been a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and a Certified Sex Therapist in Palo Alto, California for 42 years — over 40,000 sessions with individuals and couples. Marty is the author of seven books on sexuality, including Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex and How to Get it; His Porn, Her Pain: Confronting America’s PornPanic with Honest Talk about Sex; Beyond Orgasm: Dare to be Honest About the Sex you Really Want; Ask Me Anything: Dr. Klein Answers the Sex Questions You’d Love to Ask; and America’s War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty. Marty is an outspoken critic of many popular and clinical ideas about sexuality and emotional health. Wikipedia cites him as the foremost critic of the concept of sex addiction. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Porn Studies. And each year Marty gives expert testimony in various state and federal courts. A former instructor at Stanford Medical School, Marty’s humor, insights, and down-to-earth approach are regularly featured in the national media, such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, Nightline, NPR, and the Huffington Post.

Shermer and Klein discuss:

• How does one become a sex therapist?
• reasons why people see Dr. Klein for therapy:
  • “We fight all the time.”
  • “I’m a sex addict.” or “I’m out of control sexually.”
  • “I climax too fast.”
  • “I can’t get or keep erections.”
  • “I feel guilty or ashamed a lot.”
  • “I don’t orgasm during sex.”
  • “I think my spouse is cheating on me.” (or already has)
  • “I watch too much porn” or ”He watches too much porn.”
  • “I spend too much time at strip clubs, massage parlors, or with escorts.”
  • “I think about sex all the time.”
  • “We want more intimacy.”
  • “I just can’t connect with anyone.”
  • “I want to change my life, but can’t figure out how.”
  • “My in-laws are ruining our marriage.”
  • “After being divorced for 5 years, I’m scared to have sex again.”
  • “I’m successful and I feel like a fraud.”
  • “I just want someone to talk to.”
• Self-Help Sex books. Why are there no books called “How to Get Your Wife to Hug You a Little Bit More” or “How to Get Your Husband to Slow Down and Caress Your Hair and Love Doing It”?
• What is a sexual orientation? Why asexual is not an orientation. Does sexual orientation change over time?
• What constitutes sex abuse?
• infidelity
• monogamy
• polyamory
• trans
• homosexuality
• sex education: who should teach children and teens about sex: parents, schools, professional sex educators?
• the case against the sexual revolution
• sex addiction
• pornography: is there such a thing as healthy use?
• anti-pornography movement
• prostitution (the Nordic Model vs. the German Model vs. …?)
• obscenity and censorship
• pedophilia.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss321_William_Magnuson_2022_12_08.mp3Download MP3Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs.

In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn’t have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them. Corporations enabled everything from the construction of ancient Rome’s roads and aqueducts to the artistic flourishing of the Renaissance to the rise of the middle class in the twentieth century. By recapturing this original spirit of civic virtue, Magnuson argues, corporations can help craft a society in which all of us — not just shareholders — benefit from the profits of enterprise.

William Magnuson is an associate professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches corporate law. Previously, he taught law at Harvard University. The author of Blockchain Democracy, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Shermer and Magnuson discuss:

• What is a corporation and what is it for?
• What are limited liability corporations (LLC)?
• Roman corporations
• medieval economics
• banks (Medici bank), Renaissance Florence guilds
• Credit Mobilier scandal
• Dutch East India Company, British East India Company
• stocks and bonds (railroads), joint stock companies
• monopolies (oil companies like Exxon) and duopolies
• assembly lines (Henry Ford)
• multinational corporations
• raiders (KKR — Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts)
• private equity firms
• start-ups (Facebook)
• antitrust, trustbusting, Sherman Antitrust Act
• bankruptcy
• bitcoin/cryptocurrency
• Adam Smith’s critique of corporations
• profit and market efficiency
• slavery and economics
• unions

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss320_Massimo_Pigliucci_2022_12_21.mp3Download MP3 In this episode Michael Shermer speaks with the stoic philosopher and evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci on how to apply the ancient wisdom of stoicism to our personal lives and to our society.

Shermer and Pigluicci discuss:

• his journey from Rome to New York
• from evolutionary biology to stoic philosophy
• science and philosophy: similarities and differences
• facts and values: can there be a science of meaning and morality?
• stoicism and ultimate questions
• desire and action
• how to react to situations
• depression and suicide
• anger and anxiety
• love and friendship
• practical spiritual exercises
• virtue: can it be taught?
• teaching virtue to politicians
• philosophy and politics
• character and leadership
• the nature of evil.

Massimo Pigliucci is the K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. The author or editor of sixteen books, he has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Salon, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. His books include: Making Sense of Evolution; Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk; Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem; Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life; A Field Guide to a Happy Life; A Handbook for New Stoics; How to Be a Stoic; The Quest for Character.

ABOUT THE BOOKSHow to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern LifeA philosopher asks how ancient Stoicism can help us flourish today Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that focuses our attention on what is possible and gives us perspective on what is unimportant. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we handle our money in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever we are, Stoicism has something for us — and How to Be a Stoic is the essential guide.

The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good LeadersIs good character something that can be taught? In 430 BCE, Socrates set out to teach the vain, power-seeking Athenian statesman Alcibiades how to be a good person — and failed spectacularly. Alcibiades went on to beguile his city into a hopeless war with Syracuse, and all of Athens paid the price. In The Quest for Character, philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci tells this famous story and asks what we can learn from it. He blends ancient sources with modern interpretations to give a full picture of the philosophy and cultivation of character, virtue, and personal excellence — what the Greeks called arete. At heart, The Quest for Character isn’t simply about what makes a good leader. Drawing on Socrates as well as his followers among the Stoics, this book gives us lessons perhaps even more crucial: how we can each lead an excellent life.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss319_Steven_Hassan_2022_12_23.mp3Download MP3In this conversation, based on a leading cult expert Steven Hassan’s books (Combating Cult Mind Control, Freedom of Mind, and The Cult of Trump) you will acquire the tools you need to develop, use, and trust your critical thinking skills; your intuition; your bodily and emotional awareness; your ability to ask the right questions; and your skill at doing quick, useful research. You will also learn to create a healthy balance of openness and skepticism.

Steven Hassan is a mental health professional who specializes in helping people to recover from mind control as well as helping loved ones to exit without coercion. He has been helping people leave destructive relationships and organizations since 1976 after he was rescued from the infamous cult, the Moonies. Hassan directs the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, a counseling and publishing organization outside of Boston, and has taught at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is the author of Combating Cult Mind Control; Releasing the Bonds; Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs; and The Cult of Trump. See his course on mind control.

Shermer and Hassan discuss:

• What is a cult?
• types of cults: religious, political, psychotherapy/education, commercial, personality
• cult characteristics: milieu control; mystical manipulation; demand for purity; confession; sacred science; loaded language; doctrine over person; dispensing of existence
• cult leader profile: Narcissistic personality disorder/malignant narcissism; grandiosity; fantasies of success, power and attractiveness; excessive admiration; sense of entitlement; lack of empathy; envy; antisocial behavior; lying; interpersonally exploitative; sadism; harassment and silencing; violence; paranoia; allies; enemies
• influence continuum
• influence vs. undue influence vs. mind control/brainwashing.
• BITE model: Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion
• Project MK-ULTRA
• Jonestown; David Koresh and Waco; Scientology
• NXIVM
• strip search hoax
• free will & determinism: if cults are so influential why doesn’t everyone fall for them?
• How rational vs. irrational are humans? (Daniel Kahneman vs. Gerd Gingerenzer)
• Not Born Yesterday: Hugo Mercier (see show notes below)
• Kathleen Taylor’s Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
• Derren Brown’s Miracle (hypnotic control), The Push (getting someone to commit murder), The Sacrifice (getting someone to take a bullet for someone else)
• stories of people who fell under the sway of cults and other forms of undue influence but who were able to break free
• the many sophisticated ways that social media are now used for mind control
• the many types of organizations that use mind control
• the neuroscience behind mind control
• what legislators, courts, mental health professionals, and ordinary citizens can do to resist mind control and make our world a safer place
• the authoritarian mindset
• Trump and his mind-control techniques
• Trump’s diehard cult-like followers vs. Republicans who always vote GOP
• how to undo mind control and get people out of cults.

About the BooksIn Combating Cult Mind Control, Hassan discusses the evets of November 18, 1978, when over 900 people including a U.S. congressman Leo Ryan died because of Cult Leader Jim Jones. Over 300 were children forced to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid by their parents who believed they were doing God’s will. The techniques of undue influence have evolved dramatically, and continue to do so. Today, a vast array of methods exist to deceive, manipulate, and indoctrinate people into closed systems of obedience and dependency. If someone you love is already part of a mind control group, there is much you can do to help them break free and rebuild their life.

In Freedom of Mind, Hassan details his groundbreaking approach, the Strategic Interactive Approach, which can be used to help a loved one leave such a situation. Step-by-step, Hassan shows you how to: evaluate the situation; interact with dual identities; develop communication strategies using phone calls, letter writing and visits; understand and utilize cult beliefs and tactics; use reality-testing and other techniques to promote freedom of mind. He emphasizes the value of meeting with trained consultants to be effectively guided and coached and also to plan and implement effective interventions.

In The Cult of Trump, Hassan also considers the cult-like followers of Donald Trump. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings on to others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and a major Trump supporter, calls him one of the most persuasive people living. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous cult leaders like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard, and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult.

Skeptical vs. GullibleDespite the big hullaballoo around it, the idea that post-truthiness could invade the brains of gullible citizens is gainsaid by new research by cognitive scientists that demonstrates that people are not nearly as gullible as we’ve been led to believe. That is the thesis of the book Not Born Yesterday, in which the cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier presents a mountain of evidence “against the idea that humans are gullible, that they are ‘wired not to seek truth’.” Mercier reveals through both laboratory research and real-world examples that “far from being gullible, we are endowed with a suite of cognitive mechanisms that evaluate what we hear or read.” And far from defaulting to believing everything we hear, Mercier notes that “by default we veer on the side of being resistant to new ideas. In the absence of the right cues, we reject messages that don’t fit with our preconceived views or preexisting plans. To persuade us otherwise takes long-established, carefully maintained trust, clearly demonstrated expertise, and sound arguments.”1 In fact, evolution could not have created animals that are so gullible as to be routinely exploited by others, as that would ultimately lead to reproductive failure and the extinction of extreme gullibility. The search for the balance between belief and skepticism led to an evolutionary arms race between deception and deception detection, and this eventually led to the development of cognitive mechanisms that help us decide if and how much we can trust what we hear or read.2

Mass persuasion, for example, is extremely difficult to pull off, and most attempts at it fail miserably at large scales: this is because when scaled up from two-person communication to large audiences, trust cues do not scale up accordingly. Most preachers, prophets, and demagogues are lost to history, but because of the availability bias we only remember the biggest names in the genre, such as Jesus and Hitler. But even these examples flounder upon further inspection. In his own time, Jesus was a disappointment at starting a new religion (which might not have been his mission in any case), and even the apostle Paul barely got Christianity rolling. It wasn’t until the 4th century that the population of Christians was in the range of millions.3 This sounds impressive until we consider the power of compound interest, as a result of which a small but steady growth can yield an enormous figure given enough time. Invest $1 at a constant yearly interest rate of 1% in the year 0. If the dividends are reinvested, by the year 2020 the investment would be worth over $2.4 billion. Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religion, estimates Christianity’s growth rate at 3.5% over the centuries. This means that even if each Christian only saves a few souls in a lifetime, the religion could easily compile tens of millions of followers in a matter of a few centuries, and over two billion by today.4

As for Hitler, I have spent much of my career trying to understand how a nation of educated, enlightened, and cultured people could be brainwashed into becoming goose-stepping Nazis in a matter of a few years. There is now compelling evidence that, in fact, most Germans did not accept Nazi ideology, nor many of the planks in the regime platform, especially its militarist and exterminationist policies. We now know that most of Hitler’s military leaders did not want war in 1939 and warned their Führer that they were unprepared if other nations fought back ferociously.5 And certainly German citizens, satisfied with Hitler’s economic policies that pulled the country out of the depression, were uninterested in risking it all through foreign entanglements from which few would personally benefit. As the Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring told the psychiatrist Gustave Gilbert at the Nuremberg trials following the war:

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. … That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.6

It’s a revealing observation that hints at how real political conspiracies actually work, and how to get people to go along with them.

Even the anti-Semitism so famously on display in Hitler’s writings and speeches was only effective on Germans who were already anti-Semitic.7 In fact, the euthanasia of the handicapped in the 1930s was resisted by most Germans and got so much bad press that the Nazis made the program secret and issued orders to never speak of it. This policy was ramped up and implemented through the Final Solution and the Holocaust, which was shrouded in secrecy and mostly carried out in Poland, far from the prying eyes of the German people.8 By 1942, most citizens did not believe the declarations of victory issued by the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and instead relied on secreted BBC reports of how the war was really going for Germany (not well). As the Nazi Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS reported, “Our propaganda encounters rejection everywhere among the population because it is regarded as wrong and lying.”9

The Third Reich, in fact, was largely held aloft for 12 years—from when Hitler came to power as a minority party candidate in 1933 to the final Götterdammerung in the Berlin bunker in 1945—by two forces: (1) pluralistic ignorance, or the spiral of silence, when everyone believes that everyone else believes something (when in fact they don’t),10 and (2) the suppression of dissent by controlling all media and imprisoning those who speak out against the regime: the Nazi KL system included hundreds of concentration camps deliberately set up in working-class neighborhoods so the population could see for themselves what happens to those who oppose the regime.11 Thus, here we are reminded of the necessity of free speech and a free press to oppose conspiracies, real and imagined. In a wide-ranging conversation for my podcast I asked Mercier directly, “are we living in a post-truth era?” His answer was illuminating for our understanding of conspiracies, including recent ones about Russian influence on the 2016 election through their manipulation of social media:

In many ways it’s better than it’s ever been, in that people are more informed than they used to be, and because of that they tend to be more consistent in their points of view. Fake news, for example, is a very marginalized phenomenon. Only a few percent of Twitter or Facebook users actually saw or spread fake news, and it doesn’t appear to affect those who see it. People still want accurate opinions and they care about the truth. Even people who support Trump—studies show when you show them that something about Trump is fake news they accept that, even while maintaining their support for Trump.12

The reason so many Trump loyalists maintained their support of him—despite many specific claims he made that were exposed as falsehoods—is that he spoke a deeper truth to them, a mythic truth about the deep state, a political truth about how governments work, or a lived-experience truth about lost jobs or forgotten freedoms, with a patina of racism and sexism that appealed to a certain faction of the authoritarian right. Let’s look closer at how such truths are defended in order to understand how conspiracy beliefs are maintained in the teeth of contradictory evidence.

References1. Mercier, Hugo. 2020. Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 257, 270–271. 2. Trivers, Robert. 2011. The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. New York: Basic Books. 3. Ehrman, Bart D. 2018. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. New York: Simon & Schuster. 4. Stark, Rodney. 2011. The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion. New York: HarperOne. 5. Kershaw, Ian. 1983. “How Effective was Nazi Propaganda?” In D. Welch (Ed.), Nazi Propaganda: The Power and the Limitations (180–205). London: Croom Helm, 199. 6. Gilbert, Gustave. 1947/1995. “Interview with Herman Goering.” Nuremberg Diary. Da Capo Press, 122. https://bit.ly/3x1ZINR 7. Mercier, 2020, 113–127. 8. Shermer, Michael. 2000. Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Cambridge University Press, 123–172. 9. Mercier, 2020, 113–127. 10. See: Prentice, D. A. and D. T. Miller. 1993. “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of Misperceiving the Social Norm.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. February, 64(2): 243–256; Lambert, Tracy A., Arnold S. Kahn, and Kevin J. Apple. 2003. “Pluralistic Ignorance and Hooking Up.” The Journal of Sex Research. Vol. 40, No. 2, May, 129–133. 11. Wachsmann, Nikloaus. 2015. KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 12. The Michael Shermer Show. 2020. Episode 101. “The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe.” January 28. https://bit.ly/3gnNpFT If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss318_Suzie_Sheehy_2022_12_28.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Sheehy discuss:

• why there are fewer women in STEM fields
• what it’s like being a female physicist in a mostly male field
• Does science progress through falsification, confirmation, consensus, or Bayesian reasoning?
• What is an atom?
• What is light?
• What is the Higgs Boson?
• What is radioactivity?
• Experiments: Cathode Ray Tube:
  • X-rays and the Electron
  • The Gold Foil Experiment: the structure of the atom
  • The photoelectric effect: the light quantum
  • Cloud chambers: cosmic rays and new particles
  • Particle accelerators: splitting the atom
  • The Large Hadron Collider: the Higgs Boson
• Is there a place for God in scientific epistemology?
• What is time?
• Is math all there is? Is math universal?
• Are there other universes and dimensions?
• the multiverse and its multi-configurations
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• dark energy and dark matter
• What is gravity, anyway?
• String theory: how can it be tested?

Suzie Sheehy is a physicist, science communicator and academic who divides her time between research groups at the University of Oxford and University of Melbourne. She is currently focused on developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. The Matter of Everything is her first book.

About the BookPhysics has always sought to deepen our understanding of the nature of matter and the world around us. But how do you conduct experiments with the fundamental building blocks of existence? How do you manipulate a particle a trillion times smaller than a grain of sand? How do you cause a proton to sail around a twenty-seven-kilometer-long loop 11,000 times per second? And, crucially, why is all this important?

In The Matter of Everything, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged the experiments that changed the course of history. From the serendipitous discovery of X-rays in a German laboratory to the scientists trying to prove Einstein wrong (and inadvertently proving him right) to the race to split open the atom, these brilliant experiments led to some of the most significant breakthroughs in science and fundamentally changed our lives. They have helped us detect the flow of lava deep inside volcanoes, develop life-saving medical techniques like diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy, and create radio, TV, microwaves, smartphones — even the World Wide Web itself — among countless other advancements.

Along the way, Sheehy pulls back the curtain to reveal how physics is really done — not only by theorists with equation-filled blackboards but also by experimentalists with hand-blown glass, hot air balloons and cathedral-sized electronics. Celebrating human ingenuity, creativity and above all curiosity, The Matter of Everything is an inspiring story of discovery and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss317_Dacher_Keltner_2023_01_16.mp3Download MP3Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? Up until 15 years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity — actions that are sparked and spurred by awe.

In this conversation based on his new book Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. Revealing new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday life leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature. And during a moment in which our world feels more divided than ever before, and more imperiled by crises of different kinds, we are greatly in need of awe. If we open our minds, it is awe that sharpens our reasoning and orients us toward big ideas and new insights, that cools our immune system’s inflammation response and strengthens our bodies. It is awe that activates our inclination to share and create strong networks, to take actions that are good for the natural and social world around us. It is awe that transforms who we are, that inspires the creation of art, music, and religion. Awe is also a field guide for how to place awe as a vital force within our lives.

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the science of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities and search for meaning. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of The Power Paradox and the bestselling book Born to Be Good, and the coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct. His new book is Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life.

Shermer and Keltner discuss:

• the death of his brother and how this led to his study of awe
• an operational definition of awe
• the reliability (or unreliability) of self-report data in social science
• how to quantify and measure the experience of awe
• What are emotions and how can they be measured?
• love, hate, anger, fear, disgust, pleasure/pain
• hunger, thirst, lust, attraction, desires, passions
• emotions in the EEA — Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness — what are they “for”?
• Are there universal human emotions?
• the nature and nurture of emotions
• How do emotions differ from feelings, moods, drives, & passions?
• thought vs. feeling, System 1 vs. System 2 cognition
• How has the scientific understanding of emotions changed?
• the neuroscience of emotions: how the brain constructs emotions
• wanting vs. liking
• the nature-nurture of emotions: which dominates when and where?
• Paul Ekman and the universal nature of emotions
• Lisa Feldman Barrett challenge to Paul Ekman’s theory of universal emotions
• Schachter-Singer theory of emotion and its competitors
• the neuro-physiology of awe (goosebumps)
• the effects of social context on awe
• predictors of awe: nature, music, art, dance, movement/exercise, love & friendships
• awe in moral beauty
• how to train yourself to experience awe
• how awe helps heal traumas, grief, and loneliness
• mystical experiences, spirituality, and awe
• restorative justice and awe.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss316_Daniel_Akst_2022_12_13.mp3Download MP3Daniel Akst is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate and other leading publications. He was a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, and has taught at Bard College and in the Bard Prison Initiative. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Shermer and Akst discuss:

• Good vs. Bad Wars
• the Old Left and the New Left
• Religious liberals is not an oxymoron (social gospel) “Like so many reform movements in American history, pacifist dissent was essentially religious.”
• David Dellinger (codefendant with Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Tom Hayden for their antiwar protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention)
• Dorothy Day
• Dwight MacDonald
• Bayard Rustin
• American Firsters & Isolationists
• cluster of heterodoxy: anti-war/militarism, but also anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid, anti-power of the state, pro-labor, pro the rights of minorities, individual liberty on matters such as abortion and gender, anti-segregation
• internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps
• civil disobedience (Thoreau, Garrison, Gandhi)
• non-violent protests (sit-ins at segregated restaurants)
• moral equivalency: Hiroshima/Dresden vs. Majdanek/Auschwitz, London, Tokyo
• Just War Theory
• unconditional surrender vs. negotiated peace
• increase immigration of European Jews into the U.S.
• Military Industrial Complex
• nuclear arms race, Cold War, Korea, Vietnam
• moral progress with and without religion
• the escalator of reason and moral progress
• nationalism
• the rise of Christian nationalism
• the rise of authoritarianism.

About the BookPacifists who fought against the Second World War faced insurmountable odds — but their resistance, philosophy, and strategies fostered a tradition of activism that shaped America right up to the present day.

In this provocative and deeply researched work of history, Akst takes readers into the wild, heady, and uncertain times of America on the brink of a world war, following four fascinating resisters — four figures who would subsequently become famous political thinkers and activists — and their daring exploits: David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin. The lives of these diverse anti-war advocates — a principled and passionate seminary student, a Catholic anarchist, a high-brow intellectual leftist, and an African-American pacifist and agitator — create the perfect prism through which to see World War II from a new angle, that of the opposition, as well as to show how great and lasting their achievements were.

The resisters did not stop the war, of course, but their impact would be felt for decades. Many of them went on to lead the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the two most important social stands of the second half of the twentieth century. The various World War II resisters pioneered non-violent protest in America, popularized Gandhian principles, and desegregated the first prison mess halls. Theirs is a story that has never been told.

Show NotesThe just war doctrine of the Catholic Church found in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for “legitimate defense by military force:”30, 31

• The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain.
• All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
• there must be serious prospects of success.
• The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

“The serious threat to our democracy is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions similar to those which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is also accordingly here—within ourselves and our institutions.” —John Dewey

From Gustave Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary, interview with Herman Goering

Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering’s observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders: We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss315_David_Bernstein_2022_11_01.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Bernstein discuss:

• the SCOTUS case on affirmative action and race preferences at Harvard and elsewhere
• Elizabeth Warren (Cherokee ancestry — Bureau of Indian Affairs rejects?)
• Tiger Woods: Cablinasian (European, African, Thai, Chinese ancestry)
• George Zimmerman (Hispanic, half Hispanic, mixed-race, White Hispanic, White, or…?)
• Rachel Dolezal (NAACP official, adopted an African American identity, though has none)
• Kamala Harris (child of an Indian immigrant mother, father of mixed-African and European heritage from Jamaica)
• BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)
• ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves)
• the biology and legality of race
• the one-drop rule of race classification
• the rise of modern racial classification
• Hispanic, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Armenian, Cajun, South Asian, Arab, and Iranian categories
• American Indians/Native Americans
• race classification and reparations
• How can we achieve a race-blind society?

David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, and the University of Turin. Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” “well-written and destined to be influential,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. Professor Bernstein is married and has three children of mixed Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Spanish-Jewish origin. He prefers not to classify them.

About the BookAmericans are understandably squeamish about official racial and ethnic classifications. Nevertheless, they are ubiquitous in American life. Applying for a job, mortgage, university admission, citizenship, government contracts, and much more involves checking a box stating whether one is Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American. While reviewing the surprising history of American racial classifications, Classified raises questions about the classifications’ coherence, logic, and fairness; for example:

• Should Pakistani, Chinese, and Filipino Americans be in the same category despite their obvious differences in culture, appearance, religion, and more?
• Why does the government not allow Americans to classify themselves as bi- or multi-racial?
• How did the government decide that a dark-complexioned, burka-wearing Muslim Yemini should be classified as generically White, but a blond-haired, blue-eyed immigrant from Spain should be classified as Hispanic and treated as a member of a minority group?
• Why does the government require biomedical researchers to classify study participants by the official racial categories, when the classifications have no scientific basis?

In an increasingly diverse society with high rates of intergroup marriage, the American system of racial classification is getting even more arbitrary and absurd. With rising ethno-nationalism threatening democracy around the world, it’s also dangerous. Dr. Bernstein argues that the time has come to consider abolishing official racial classification and replace it with the separation of race and state.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss314_Martin_Rees_2022_11_09.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Rees discuss:

• Existential threats or serious problems to solve?
• overpopulation
• biodiversity loss
• climate change
• AI and self-driving cars, robots, and unemployment
• his bet with Steven Pinker
• how science works as a communal activity
• scientific creativity
• science communication
• science creativity
• Why aren’t there more women and people of color in STEM fields?
• verification vs. falsification: from Francis Bacon to Karl Popper
• Bayesian reasoning and scientific progress
• Model Dependent Realism and the nature of reality
• Fermi’s Paradox: where is everyone (ETIs)?
• the “fine-tuning” of the universe and Intelligent Design Creationism
• Secular Intelligent Design and the future of super computers and AI
• science and religion
• his disagreement with Richard Dawkins
• why he’s an atheist but wants to be buried in the Presbyterian church in which he was raised
• mysterian mysteries: are there things we can never know, even in principle?

Martin Rees is Astronomer Royal, former President of the Royal Society, Fellow (and former Master) of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He sits as a member of the UK House of Lords. He is the author of many bestselling popular science books, including: On the Future; Just Six Numbers; Before the Beginning; and Our Final Hour. His newest book is If Science is to Save Us.

About the BookThere has never been a time when “following the science” has been more important for humanity. At no other point in history have we had such advanced knowledge and technology at our fingertips, nor had such astonishing capacity to determine the future of our planet.

But the decisions we must make on how science is applied belong outside the lab and should be the outcome of wide public debate. For that to happen, science needs to become part of our common culture. Science is not just for scientists: if it were, it could never save us from the multiple crises we face. For science can save us, if its innovations mesh carefully into society and its applications are channeled for the common good.

As Martin Rees argues in this expert and personal analysis of the scientific endeavour on which we all depend, we need to think globally, we need to think rationally and we need to think long-term, empowered by twenty-first-century technology but guided by values that science alone cannot provide.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss313_Matthew_Cobb_2022_11_30.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Cobb discuss:

• Political objections to genetic engineering
• Religious objections to genetic engineering
• Cultural objections to genetic engineering
• Selective breeding as genetic engineering
• Recombinant DNA
• Asilomar conference on the ethics of genetics
• Patenting life
• Gene therapy
• Gene editing
• CRISPR
• Literature and films on the dangers of genetic engineering: Brave New World, The Andromeda Strain, The Boys from Brazil, Gattaca, Jurassic Park, The Manchurian Candidate, Frankenstein
• Genetically engineered bioweapons
• Nature/Nurture and the 3 Laws of Behavior Genetics:
  1. All human behavioral traits are heritable.
  2. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes.
  3. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.”
• What people fear about behavior genetics:
  1. The Fear of Inequality
  2. The Fear of Imperfectibility
  3. The Fear of Determinism:
  4. The Fear of Nihilism.

Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of six books: The Idea of the Brain: A History; Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code; Generation; The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis; Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris in 1944; and Smell: A Very Short Introduction. He lives in England.

About the BookIn 2018, scientists manipulated the DNA of human babies for the first time. As biologist and science historian Matthew Cobb shows in As Gods, this achievement was one many scientists have feared from the start of the genetic age. Four times in the last fifty years, geneticists, frightened by their own technology, have called a temporary halt to their experiments. They ought to be frightened: Now we have powers that can target the extinction of pests, change our own genes, or create dangerous new versions of diseases in an attempt to prevent future pandemics. Both awe-inspiring and chilling, As Gods traces the history of genetic engineering, showing that this revolutionary technology is far too important to be left to the scientists. They have the power to change life itself, but should we trust them to keep their ingenuity from producing a hellish reality?

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss312_Louise_Perry_2022_12_02.mp3Download MP3Louise Perry is a writer, New Statesman columnist, and campaigner against male sexual violence. Her new book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, has sparked an international conversation about sex in the 21st century.

Shermer and Perry discuss:

• What was the sexual revolution?
• feminism: first wave, second wave, third wave, and beyond
• the evolutionary psychology of sex differences
• experiencing self vs. remembered self
• individual freedom vs. societal good
• monogamy vs. polygamy
• marriage vs. domestic partnerships
• Why is the government in the marriage business?
• BDSM and sexual violence
• autogynephilia
• trans matters
• abortion matters

About the BookDitching the stuffy hang-ups and benighted sexual traditionalism of the past is an unambiguously positive thing. The sexual revolution has liberated us to enjoy a heady mixture of erotic freedom and personal autonomy. Right?

Wrong, argues Louise Perry in her provocative new book. Although it would be neither possible nor desirable to turn the clock back to a world of pre-60s sexual mores, she argues that the amoral libertinism and callous disenchantment of liberal feminism and our contemporary hypersexualized culture represent more loss than gain. The main winners from a world of rough sex, hook-up culture and ubiquitous porn – where anything goes and only consent matters – are a tiny minority of high-status men, not the women forced to accommodate the excesses of male lust. While dispensing sage advice to the generations paying the price for these excesses, she makes a passionate case for a new sexual culture built around dignity, virtue and restraint.

This counter-cultural polemic from one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary feminism should be read by all men and women uneasy about the mindless orthodoxies of our ultra-liberal era.

David Buss: When Men Behave BadlyNumber of sexual partners preferred“Many men are burdened by lust for a variety of different women, constant cravings that cannot ever be fully satisfied … It explains why a handsome movie star such as Hugh Grant would have sex with a prostitute, despite having Elizabeth Hurley, a gorgeous model and actress, as his then steady girlfriend.”Length of time before engaging in sexEven in the most egalitarian countries, men prefer more sexual partners compared to women. In Norway, researchers asked people how many sex partners they would prefer over the next 30 years. On average, women preferred five, men preferred 25. Even the desire to kiss before intercourse differs between the sexes. About 53 percent of men report that they would have sex without kissing, while only 14.6 percent of women would have sex without kissing.Choosiness vs. less discerningStudies of online dating, for example, find that most men find most women to be at least somewhat attractive. In contrast, women, on average, view 80% of men as below average in attractiveness. Another study found that on the dating app Tinder, men “liked” more than 60% of the female profiles they viewed, while women “liked” only 4.5% of male profiles.Sexual regretsSexual mistakes are viewed differently. Research indicates that when asked to reflect on their sexual history, women are more likely to regret having had sex with someone, while men are more likely to regret having missed out on sexual opportunities.What men and women look for in a mateFor same-sex friends, men and women prioritized personality and social intelligence. For opposite-sex friends, though, men assigned greater value on attractiveness, whereas women placed greater value on economic resources and physical prowess.Sexual harassment perceptionsWhen men were asked how they would feel if their co-worker of the opposite sex asked them to have sex, 67 percent of men said they would be flattered and only 15 percent said they would be insulted. In contrast, 63 percent of women said they would be insulted and only 17 percent said they would be flattered.Back-up mates and cheatingWhy do people cheat on their romantic partners? For men, it appears that the main reason they stray is the desire for sexual variety. In fact, men who cheat are just as happy in their marriages as men who are faithful. In contrast, women who stray are often unhappy. Women who have affairs often want to detach themselves from relationships in which they are unsatisfied and seek a better partner. In fact, only 30 percent of men report falling in love with their affair partners, while for women it is 79 percent.From Michael Shermer’s The Moral ArcConsider the morality of the biblical warlords who had no qualms about taking multiple wives, adultery, keeping concubines, and fathering countless children from their many polygamous arrangements. The anthropologist Laura Betzig has put these stories into an evolutionary context by analyzing the Old Testament. She found no less than 41 named polygamists, not one of which was a powerless man. “In the Old Testament, powerful men—patriarchs, judges, and kings—have sex with more wives; they have more sex with other men’s women; they have sex with more concubines, servants, and slaves; and they father many children.” And not just the big names. According to Betzig’s analysis, “men with bigger herds of sheep and goats tend to have sex with more women, then to father more children.” Most of the polygynous patriarchs, judges, and kings had two, three, or four wives with a corresponding number of children, although King David had more than eight wives and twenty children, King Abijah had 14 wives and 38 children, and King Rehoboam had 18 wives (and 60 other women) who bore him no fewer than 88 offspring. But they were all lightweights compared to King Solomon, who married at least 700 women. There were Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women he married, then for good measure added 300 concubines, which he called “man’s delight.” (What Solomon’s concubines called him was never recorded.)

From Carol Tavris’s reviews of: Nona Willis Aronowitz’s Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution; Christine Emba’s Rethinking Sex: A Provocation; Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. Bridget Phetasy’s in substack essay “Beyond Parody”

After devoting many years to the scientific study of women’s heterosexual experiences—through reading, observing, listening, and participating—I have drawn a few conclusions:

1. Many women like sex when it brings erotic pleasure and they like the guy. This is called “good sex.”
2. Many women don’t like sex when the guy is a dork, rude, thoughtless, clumsy, coercive, or violent. This is called “bad sex.”
3. Many women enjoy hookups, short affairs, conference connections, orgies (planned and spontaneous), and adventures with multiples and variations of all kinds. This is called “having fun.”
4. Many #3 women get tired after a few years (“Oh God, Murray, another orgy?”), whereas others make it a way of life. This is called “being in the lifestyle.”
5. Many women prefer sex with one doting partner at a time, the “time” lasting from as long as love does, from a week to a lifetime. This is called “a loving relationship.”

In every era, there are people who devote their energies to telling women they’re doing it all wrong. Are you enjoying monogamy with your sweetheart when others all around you are claiming that it is liberating, feminist, and “sex positive” to have many partners? Are you hopelessly straight or gay, or a hopelessly old-fashioned one-partner-at-a-time person, even though you think that for political, personal, or progressive reasons you really ought to be trying the alternatives? Are you enjoying your many affairs when others all around you are claiming that women aren’t designed for infidelity, that you’re merely capitulating to the Playboy standard, that you’re repressing the trauma of all those impersonal adventures, that you’re just a dupe and victim of hardwired male sexual preferences? Like a call-and-response in music or church, whichever view is ascendant will call for its inevitable antithetical response. Sex writers are always pouncing on a new hook, even when today’s new is yesterday’s old.

Today’s hook is this: if it’s good to be sex-positive, how come so many women are having sex-negative experiences? Why so much unwanted sex, harassments, miserable hookups, drunken episodes? Why the eternal difficulties in communication? Why do many women feel obliged to “consent,” when they’d rather go home and play with the dog? A spate of recent books locates the answers in the failure of feminism and the “unfinished” sexual revolution to make women’s sexual lives a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

To her credit, Nona Willis Aronowitz does not write an analysis of women’s continuing search for sexual ecstasy, satisfaction, and thoughtful male partners as if no one had done so before. That would have been a challenge, given that her own mother, the brilliant feminist Ellen Willis, tackled these questions a generation earlier, and her daughter interweaves her mother’s writings and experiences, along with those of other feminists of that era, with her own stories. But whereas her mother’s generation (and mine) emphasized that the personal is political, Willis Aronowitz’s mantra is the political is personal.

Personal? TMI is an understatement. Indeed, readers may forgiven for asking, What bad sex? The book is a litany of the many orgasms she’s had, hours and hours of cunnilingus with this lover and that one, anal oral sideways multiples, the fantastic lovers, the terrible lovers, how she loves dick, experiments with other women, passionate weekends. The “bad sex” of the title is mostly “bad relationships”—hookups with men who were selfish or otherwise unlikeable, or, in the case of the partner she leaves at the outset of her story, relationships that had become sexually boring. Here it all is again, yet another woman trying to find the blissful balance between committed sex and casual sex—open relationships being necessary for anyone who believes that monogamy is death to being a fully sexually liberated person. Calling Dr. Ester Perel and the innumerable marriage counselors who study the shapeshifting patterns of intimacy, passion, and desire over the course of life and love.

As I read this book, I wondered how the same narrative would sound if written by a man:

“I left my otherwise loving partner, whom I loved, because I got bored with her and our sex life, and I didn’t like her off-putting smell that ruined our sexual chemistry. I’m happy to report other intimate details about her that annoyed me, but I won’t bother you with her perspective on me. I will tell you about my many lovers so you will understand how desirable I am, including that amazing afternoon in which I received one blow job after another. I confess that certain body shapes and sizes turn me on. Unfortunately, along with the hot women I couldn’t get enough of, at least until I tired of them, I hooked up with some awful women too—demanding, rude, noncommunicative about their desires, egocentric. Wait: one of those impersonal hookups was a very nice person.”

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss311_Meghan_Daum_2022_11_14.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Daum discuss:

• unauthorized autobiography
• “Write about feminism, because as a straight, cisgendered, able-bodied, (mostly) heteronormative white chick, it’s the only thing available to you anyway.”
• Feminism (first wave, second wave, third wave, and beyond)
• Was the sexual revolution good or bad (or both) for women?
• badassery, problematica, wokescenti (“to describe the class of NPR-listening, New Yorker-reading, Slate-podcast-downloading elites once called the cognoscenti. They are now the wokescenti.”)
• Gen Xers: the last generation to experience both analogue and digital
• Elders: are we not respected any longer by younger generations?
• What is a woman?
• Sex and Gender
• who you identify as vs. who you’re attracted to
• Trans
• the #metoo movement
• the #BLM movement
• intersectionality
• toxic masculinity
• wokeness, liberal vs. progressiveness, far left vs. left
• cancel culture
• political tribalism.

Meghan Daum is the author of six books, most recently The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars. Her collection of original essays, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, won the 2015 Pen Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. A Los Angeles Times opinion columnist from 2005 to 2016, Meghan has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Vogue. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has taught Columbia University in addition to teaching private workshops in personal essay, memoir and opinion writing. Meghan is the host of the weekly interview podcast, The Unspeakable and the cohost, with Sarah Haider, of the weekly podcast A Special Place in Hell. Meghan founded The Unspeakeasy, an intellectual community for freethinking women. Her current writings are on Substack.

About the BookFrom an author who’s been called “one of the most emotionally exacting, mercilessly candid, deeply funny, and intellectually rigorous writers of our time” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild) comes a seminal book that reaches surprising truths about feminism, the Trump era, and the Resistance movement: The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars.

In this gripping work, Meghan examines our country’s most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and personal reflection, she tries to make sense of the current landscape—from Donald Trump’s presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about campus politics and notions of personal resilience, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss310_Todd_Kashdan_2022_08_16.mp3Download MP3For too long, the term insubordination has evoked negative feelings and mental images. But for ideas to evolve and societies to progress, it’s vital to cultivate rebels who are committed to challenging conventional wisdom and improving on it. Change never comes easily. And most would-be rebels lack the skills to overcome hostile audiences who cling desperately to the way things are. Based on cutting-edge research, The Art of Insubordination is the essential guide for anyone seeking to be heard, make change, and rebel against an unhealthy status quo. Filled with engaging stories about dissenters in the trenches as well as science that will transform your thinking.

Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at George Mason University, and a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He has published more than 220 scientific articles, his work has been cited more than 35,000 times, and he received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. His books Curious? and The Upside of Your Dark Side have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and other publications, and his research is featured regularly in media outlets such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Time. He’s a twin with twin daughters (plus one more), with plans to rapidly populate the world with great conversationalists.

Shermer and Kashdan discuss:

• how he became an insubordinate rebel in his unusual young life
• the effects of a fatherless home on children’s lives (on average)
• when parents matter more or less on life outcomes of their children
• the influence of role models on life decisions
• how civil rights movements make progress
• the adversarial court system
• how juries think (and how they should think)
• the racialization of everything in America
• why we focus on race instead of eye color
• why viewpoint diversity is good
• How diverse should a group be?
• how leaders can direct group members to be more vocal
• how to resist the allure of complacency
• how to discover the value of being around people who stop conforming and start deviating
• how to produce messages that influence the majority (when in the minority)
• how to build alliances
• how to champion ideas that run counter to traditional thinking
• how to unlock the benefits of being in a group of diverse people holding divergent views
• how to cultivate curiosity, courage, and independent, critical thinking in youth.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss309_India_Thusi_2022_06_21.mp3Download MP3Shermer and Thusi discuss: how she gained access to police and sex workers in Johannesburg • what it was like patrolling brothels in Johannesburg • what sex work is, exactly (street-based, brothel-based, escort services, private, dance hall, and hotel sex work) • why sex workers are mostly women and patrons mostly men • why sex work is illegal in many places and whether it should be legal and regulated like any other trade • the liminal nature of sex work (mostly illegal, mostly goes on anyway, difficult to police) • Critical Race Theory • racism and antiracism • President Barack Obama • her response to Shelby Steele and Jason Hill’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy • why we are not living in a post-racial society (yet) and why race matters (still).

India Thusi is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law with a joint appointment at the Kinsey Institute. Her research examines racial and sexual hierarchies as they relate to policing, race, and gender. Her articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, Northwestern Law Review (twice), Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review Online, amongst others. She has worked at the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and — most recently — The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab that collaborates to effect lasting policy and culture change. She served as a federal law clerk to two social justice giants: the Honorable Robert L. Carter, who sat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and was the lead counsel for the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education; and the Honorable Damon J. Keith, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and is lauded for his prominent civil rights jurisprudence. She also clerked for Justice van der Westhuizen at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the country’s highest court. She was recognized as a Top 40 Rising Young Lawyer by the American Bar Association in 2019. Her book is Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss308_Iris_Berent_2022_10_07.mp3Download MP3The Blind Storyteller is an intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent’s own cutting-edge research. It grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so afraid of zombies, to whether dyslexia is “just in our heads,” from what happens to us when we die, to why we are so infatuated with our brains. The end result is a startling new perspective on the age-old nature/nurture debate — and on what it means to be human.

Shermer and Berent discuss:

• nature/nurture genes/environment biology/culture
• language and innate knowledge
• what babies are born knowing
• how people reason about human nature
• dualism
• essentialism
• theory of mind
• the nature of the self
• innate beliefs in the soul and afterlife
• free will and determinism
• how people think about mental illness and disorders
• how one’s theory of human nature effects one’s attitudes about nearly everything.

Iris Berent is a Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, Boston, and the Director of the Language and Mind Lab. Berent’s research has examined how the mind works and how we think it does. She is the author of dozens of groundbreaking scientific publications and the recipient of numerous research grants. Her previous book, The Phonological Mind (Cambridge, 2013), was hailed by Steven Pinker as a “brilliant and fascinating analysis of how we produce and interpret sound.”

About the BookDo newborns think? Do they know that “three” is greater than “two”? Do they prefer “right” to “wrong”? What about emotions? Can newborns recognize happiness or anger? If the answer to these questions is yes, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die?

Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body problem have been the topics of fierce scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, that newborn babies don’t know the difference between right and wrong — such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite — that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied.

These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In The Blind Storyteller, the cognitive psychologist Iris Berent exposes a chasm between our intuitive understanding of human nature and the conclusions emerging from science. Her conclusions show that many of our stories are misguided. Just like Homer, we, the storyteller, are blind.

How could we get it so wrong? In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: Our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself.

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Shermer and Dirks discuss: vaccine hesitancy • why antibiotics do not generate the same distrust • vaccines and autism • COVID-19 and its differential effects on people • the lab-leak hypothesis vs. the zoonomic hypothesis for the origin of SARS CoV-2 • Anthony Fauci and the CDC • climate denial • how trust in science has changed over the past century • the politicization of science • how to talk to someone who doesn’t trust science or scientists.

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Shermer and Alexander discuss: his journey from Trinidad to the Bronx to professor of physics • what it’s like being Black in a mostly White and Asian field of science • systemic racism and misogyny • how to be an outsider inside a science • how to tell the difference between revolutionary and worthless new ideas • how do laypeople understand whether something is good science or not? • the double-slit experiment • superposition • connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism • creativity • What banged the Big Bang? • Are we living in a matrix? • Deepak Chopra’s mind monism • consciousness and the universe.

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Shermer and Patrick discuss: her memoir Life B • trends in treatment of depression and other mental diseases • why memoirs by authors who have suffered traumas and stresses in their lives sell so well • non-fiction, fiction, and quasi-nonfictional fiction • censorship and cancel culture in publishing • why the New York Times bestseller list is so influential • the trial over the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House over whether it will lead to a monopsony • the future of publishing and book stores • how writing compares to more accessible forms of content such as film or podcasting • what advice she would give to new would-be authors.

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Shermer and Gregg discuss: • intelligence • stupidity • dolphins • artificial intelligence • language • rationality • moral systems • comparative thanatology • “causal inference” vs. “learned associations” • humans as “why specialists” • death awareness • why narwhals do not commit genocide • “prognostic myopia” • our “shortsighted farsightedness" as "an extinction-level threat to humanity” • consciousness and sophisticated consciousness: animals and humans • free will • determinism • pleasure vs. happiness vs. purposefulness.

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The problem of conspiracism is urgent—arguably more pressing than at any time in our history. In his new book, Conspiracy, out October 25, 2022, Shermer: reviews and integrates evolutionary, psychological, social, cultural, political, and economic conditions that fuel conspiracy theories • presents his original three-tiered theoretical model of Proxy Conspiracism, Tribal Conspiracism, and Constructive Conspiracism • classifies and systematizes conspiracy theories in order to tease apart their different causes • offers his Conspiracy Detection Kit on how to tell if a conspiracy theory is true, false, or undecidable • and suggests how to talk to a conspiracy theorist.

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Shermer and Palmer discuss: doubt and skepticism • when doubt slides into denial • uncertainty as a measurement problem vs. inherent in natural systems • contingency and necessity, randomness and law • the butterfly effect • the geometry of chaos • quantum uncertainty • weather forecasting • climate change • pandemics • economic recessions • human decision making and creativity • free will • consciousness, and God.

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Shermer and Blinder discuss: serving on Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers • being the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board • What kind of science is economics? • how one’s political leanings influence cause-and-effect economic theories • the difference between monetary and fiscal policy • a Keynesian approach to economics • inflation, stagflation, recessions, depressions, Bull and Bear markets defined • interest rates • the Federal Reserve • the money supply • What makes money valuable without the gold standard? • COVID relief • deficit spending • boom-and-bust cycles • employment: what’s the right percentage? • income tax: what’s the right percentage? • the best investments to make in the long run • modern monetary theory, and • utility maximizing.

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Shermer and Ali discuss: • the search for structure in nature • order and randomness • economic laws • natural laws • natural orders: molecular, quantum, crystals, carbonic, nuclear, magnetic • hydrological, organismic, Gaia and Medea • reductionism and holism • Islamic economics • the origin of wealth • Is there an optimal economic order? • how mining rights work in the U.S. and elsewhere • the voter’s paradox • Pareto optimality and why we can’t achieve it • resource nationalism • the resource curse • why India and Pakistan have not used their nukes on each other • social orders • population and sustainability: neo-Malthusianism • How many people can the Earth hold? • why we need nuclear power for sustainability • internationalism and globalism • Trekonomics.

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Shermer and Reeves discuss: comparison method: U.S. vs. other WERID countries • education • work/labor market • family • marriage • Divorce/custody/spousal support/child support • intersectionality I: Black boys and men vs. White boys and men • intersectionality II: poor boys and men vs. middle class/upper class boys and men • What is a man? (nature and nurture in the making of a male) • what the political left gets wrong about boys and men • what the political right gets wrong about boys and men • solutions: red shirt boys early; men in STEM and HEAL • fatherhood as an independent institution.

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Shermer and Tyson discuss: why he decided to write about social, cultural, and political issues now • conflict and resolution in science and society • moral progress in society and why it happens • meatarians and vegetarians • race and gender • law and order • the principle of interchangeable perspectives • conflicting rights and how to resolve them • Rationalia (Neil’s hypothetical country whose laws are based on rationality) • life and death • how long Neil would like to live • the meaning in life.

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Shermer and Doyle discuss: terminology of: PC, identity politics, woken, social justice, antifa, BLM, TERF, intersectionality • Critical Social Justice as a witch craze • Satanic Panic (1980s) • Recovered Memory Movement (1990s) • How widespread is the problem: minor skirmishes on social media or mainstream? • Hill-Harris 2021 poll: 32% voters ID as woke and 31% said they don’t know what the term means • new puritanism as a secular religion • Whiteness and White fragility • Implicit Association Test • Postmodernism • Neo-Marxism • Cancel Culture • hate speech • J.K. Rowling • pluralistic ignorance.

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Shermer and Bloom discuss: “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” — Jane Elliott famous racism experiment • reactions to it (in the classroom, locally, nationally, internationally) • whether the “experiment” was really more of a demonstration • public interest, from Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey • the questionable ethics of the experiment • what it reveals about tribalism, racism, obedience to authority, role playing, social proof • whether it reveals hidden racist attitudes or creates them in children • race sensitivity training programs (and why they don’t really work) • what drives moral progress • the future of journalism.

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Shermer, Tupy, and Pooley discuss: why we long for the “good ol’ days” • the Malthusian trap • Ehrlich’s predictions on overpopulation • the birth dearth • the Simon Abundance Index • compound interest • What does it mean for the economy to grow 2–3% a year? • accumulating wealth • what poorer countries need to do to become richer countries • running out of fossil fuels • Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech • inflation • electric vehicles • How many people can the Earth sustain? • post-scarcity trekonomics • the future of religion and other social institutions in a superabundant world.

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What is time? Does the past still exist? How did the universe begin and how will it end? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Why doesn’t anyone ever get younger? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? To examine these ideas, Shermer speaks with Sabine Hossenfelder, a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. She has published more than eighty research articles about the foundations of physics, including quantum gravity, physics beyond the standard model, dark matter, and quantum foundations.

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Shermer and Kisin discuss: growing up in Russia • “The Talk” Russian parents give their children • What is the “West” and how do Russians view it • Should Whites feel some guilt for slavery, racism, misogyny, bigotry, etc.? • systemic racism: criminal justice, housing, employment, income, wealth • Critical Race Theory (CRT) • immigration • free, private, and public speech • how language is used to distort truth • the origin of “political correctness” • journalism vs. activism • capitalism • and how the West could be lost.

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Shermer and Marcus discuss: why AI chatbot LaMDA is not sentient • “mind”, “thinking”, and “consciousness”, and how do molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes • the hard problem of consciousness • the self and other minds • How would we know if an AI system was sentient? • Can AI systems be conscious? • free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism • language • Can we have an inner life without language? • How rational or irrational an animal are we?

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Shermer and Ashton discuss: what it’s like advising Google and Buckingham Palace on how to communicate • what makes writing appealing and effective • how to write better emails and social media posts • why the messages we write often backfire • why emails so often make us angry • What makes Donald Trump such a powerful communicator that he can seemingly hypnotize tens of millions of people and dictate entire news cycles with a single statement? • when you should stop writing and pick up the phone to talk instead.

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Shermer and de Salcedo discuss: her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at age 27 • her long-term psychological strategy for living with a serious illness • what “eating like a pig” actually means • our 70-year-old “diet detour” • the obesity crisis • how dietary studies are conducted • the baseline health of lab rats • static vs. dynamic metabolism • diseases you can treat, manage, or prevent with exercise • cholesterol and statins • why exercise is more important than diet • how you can have your cake and eat it, too.

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Shermer and Kirchick discuss: archives and secret sources of secret histories • the cause of homophobia, and how and why homosexuality was thought of as a “contagious sexual aberrancy” • why there is no lesbian history of Washington • J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson and gay mythmaking • FDR and Sumner Welles • why at the height of the Cold War, it was safer to be a Communist than a homosexual • Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss • the McCarthy hearings and how the Lavender Menace became inextricably linked with the Red Menace • astronomer Franklin Kameny and the Mattachine Society • JFK and his tolerance of homosexuality • Richard Nixon’s notorious homophobia • Ronald Reagan’s conflicting attitudes toward homosexuality • George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and real progress in acceptance of homosexuality • the trans movement and its homophobic consequences.

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Shermer and Cooke discuss: the definition of male and female across the animal kingdom • male bias in the history of science • genes involved in sex determination and how they work • sexual selection • adaptationism vs. non-adaptationism • Why do women have orgasms? • why female animals are just as promiscuous, competitive, aggressive, dominant and dynamic as males • what humans can learn from non-human animals • maternal/paternal instincts • patriarchy/matriarchy across the animal kingdom • why the sexes are far more alike than they are different.

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Shermer and Azarian discuss: laws of thermodynamics and directionality • how complexity formed after the Big Bang • laws of nature: discovered or created or both? • Stephen Jay Gould and contingency vs. necessitating laws of nature • convergent evolution and directionality in evolution • the left wall of simplicity • leading theories for the origin of life • complexity theory and emergence • consciousness, the self, and other minds • free will, determinism, compatibilism, panpsychism • Is there purpose in the cosmos?

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Since the dawn of social science, theorists have debated how and why societies appear to change, develop and evolve. Shermer speaks with sociologist Kevin McCaffree about: his research on crime and gun violence • diversity, equity, and inclusion • political polarization •cultural and biological evolution • horizontal/equalitarian vs. vertical/hierarchical societies • human selfishness and the problem of altruism, and what the future holds for humanity and society…

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Biological sex is no longer accepted as a basic fact of life. Shermer and Joyce discuss: What is a woman? What is a man? • conflicting rights: trans vs. women • sex vs. gender • gender dysphoria • social contagions • gender affirming care • puberty blockers, testosterone, hormone treatment • detransitioning • top surgery, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty • preferred pronouns: compelled speech ≠ free speech • trans sports • exclusive spaces, and more…

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Political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is a return to the empiricist, religious, and nationalist traditions of America and Britain. Shermer makes the case for Enlightenment liberalism, with its focus on science and reason, as the primary driver of moral progress over the centuries.

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Shermer and Strevens discuss: irrationality and how it drives science • the knowledge machine • the replication crisis, what caused it, and what to do about it • verification vs. falsification • the iron rule of explanation • Bayesian reasoning vs. falsification • climate/evolution skeptics • model dependent realism • humanism • theistic arguments for: God, origin of life, morality, consciousness • known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns • how to evaluate media sources of science.

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Shermer and Seth discuss: consciousness • controlled hallucinations • the self and other minds • Where does consciousness go during general anaesthesia? After death? • Are we living in a simulation that itself is inside a simulation? • Does Deep Blue know that it beat the great Gary Kasparov in chess? • Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!? • Is Data on Star Trek sentient, conscious, and with feelings? • Can AI systems be conscious? • free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism.

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Most people rely on their gut instinct to decide how to date, who to marry, where to live, what career path to take, how to find happiness, but what if our gut is wrong? Biased, unpredictable, and misinformed, our gut, it turns out, is not all that reliable. Michael Shermer speaks with economist and former Google data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on using data to get what you really want in life.

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Shermer and Rosenfeld discuss: why we have a duopoly • gerrymandering • voting restrictions • how we know all elections are not rigged • abortion • immigration • US foreign policy • the rise of conservative and liberal think tanks • ideology • political polarization • political leanings of industrialists vs. tech billionaires and rural poor vs. urban poor • Trump and 2016, 2020, and 2024 (are we facing civil unrest as never seen before?)…

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In this conversation on deep time and big history, Shermer and Morris discuss the history of Big History, the future of energy and civilization, China and the future of energy and political power, what Britain was like 8000 years ago, the major transitions in British history, counterfactual history, slavery and the abolition of the slave trade, the role of ideas in history (civil rights, rule of law, justice, etc.), reparations and making right the wrongs of the past.

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The future is uncertain, a bit spooky, possibly dangerous, maybe wonderful. We cope with this never-ending uncertainty by telling stories about the future: future stories. How do we construct those stories? Where is the future, the place where we set those stories? Can we trust our future stories? And what sort of futures do they show us? David Christian is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. In this conversation, he reveals what he thinks the future holds for our species.

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As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to believe that he was killed by a conspiracy involving multiple assassins. Shermer and Gagné discuss: conspiracies and conspiracy theories; what role conspiracy theories play in society; who believes them and why; why conspiracy theorists rewrite the past; Trump and rigged election; Obama Birtherism; and more…

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Michael Shermer speaks with Andrew Yang about the Forward Party, the future of politics in a party duopoly, political partisanship, and how to bring about the change we need. This conversation is based on Yang’s new book Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.

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Shermer and Arikha discuss: dementia, senility, Alzheimer’se • mental illness and the labeling problem • the social construction of mental illness • neurology and psychiatry • agency and volition • memory and amnesia • autobiographical memory • self and embodied self • brain modularity • brain as a machine • emotions and cognition • conversion disorder/hysteria • depression • metacognition • exteroception and interoception.

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What is gender? How different are men and women? Are differences due to biological sex or to culture? How do they compare with what is known about our fellow primates? Do apes also culturally learn their sex roles or is “gender” uniquely human? Michael Shermer and Frans de Waal discuss sexual orientation, gender identity, and the limitations of the gender binary, exceptions to which are also found in other primates.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Cathy Young, a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute. She writes on a wide variety of cultural and political issues, including gender issues (equal opportunity in the workplace, sexual harassment policy, sexual assault and domestic violence law, child custody, etc.), freedom of speech and intellectual tolerance, diversity, education, and perspectives on American history, as well as Russia and U.S.-Russian relations.

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Michael Shermer speaks with psychologist and behavioral scientist, Stuart Vyse, about aspects of human nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us achieve our social and personal goals. In his book, and in this conversation, Vyse presents an accessible exploration of the psychological concepts behind useful delusions, fleshing out how delusional thinking may play a role in love and relationships, illness and loss, and personality and behavior.

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Peter Ward is a British business and technology reporter whose reporting has taken him across the globe. Reporting from Dubai, he covered the energy sector in the Middle East before earning a degree in business journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, The Economist, GQ, BBC Science Focus, and Newsweek.

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Moshe Hoffman is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology whose research focuses on using game theory and models of learning. Erez Yoeli is a research scientist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, whose research focuses on altruism: understanding how it works and how to promote it.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Richard Dawkins about his new book Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution. They also discuss: nationalism; Russian revanchism; the recent rise of authoritarianism and autocracies; U.S. acceptance of the theory of evolution surpassing 50%; E. O. Wilson; and more…

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Michael Shermer Speaks with Douglas Murray about his new book The War on the West: Race, Politics, and Culture.

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Michael Shermer Speaks With Louis Theroux About Neo-Nazis, Jimmy Savile, UFO Cults, and Scientology.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Jesse Singal about this new book: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Christopher Blattman about his new book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace.

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In this conversation, Shermer speaks with Adam Levin, a consumer advocate with more than 30 years’ experience in personal finance, privacy, real estate and government service. A former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, Levin is Chairman and founder of Identity Theft 911.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Dave Rubin: New York Times bestselling author, and creator and host of The Rubin Report. They discuss his book Don’t Burn This Country: Surviving and Thriving in Our Woke Dystopia.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Oliver Stone about Ukraine, Putin, and the military-industrial complex.

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Michael Shermer speaks with quantum physicist, Jim Al-Khalili, who reveals how 8 lessons from the heart of science can help us all get the most out of our lives.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Batya Ungar-Sargon about her new book Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy in which she reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century — from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession.

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Michael Shermer speaks with computational neuroscientist, Ogi Ogas, about his unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos, and how leading cities and nation-states are developing “superminds,” and perhaps planting the seeds for even higher forms of consciousness.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Professor of International Relations, Dr. Jacek Kugler, about his Power Transition Theory as it pertains to China, Russia, and Ukraine.

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Michael Shermer speaks with Simon Conway Morris about chance, direction, and design in evolution, the possibility of purpose in the cosmos, and the existence (or not) of god.

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Shermer speaks with world-renowned future forecaster and game designer, Jane McGonigal, about her book Imaginable in which she draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our minds to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable by inviting us to play with provocative thought experiments and future simulations.

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Michael Shermer speaks with University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and codirector of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University, Dr. David Chalmers, about his book Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.

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Whatever happened to reasoned discussion and respectable disagreement? Michael Shermer speaks with Ravi Gupta, the Founder and CEO of Lost Debate, a new non-profit media company that launched in October 2021 to fight polarization and misinformation online.

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Michael Shermer speaks with political demographer, former demographics consultant to the United States Department of Defense, and author of The Future Faces of War, Jennifer Sciubba, about her new 8 Billion and Counting.

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Shermer speaks with renowned Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and what we might expect from Putin’s Russia in the coming weeks, months, and years, along with Dr. Mueller’s outline for how to end the current conflict and compromise with Putin.

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Michael Shermer speaks with journalist Kelly Weill whose work covers extremism, disinformation, and online conspiracy theories in current affairs. The conversation is based on her book Off the Edge which tells a powerful story about belief, polarized realities, and what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.

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Michael Shermer provides an analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Will sanctions work? This reading is based on his Substack post entitled: “Putin’s Problem: The outlawry of war has forced tyrants to concoct excuses for invading other countries. How should we respond? Evidence shows that outcasting in the form of economic sanctions beats armed conflict.”

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Michael Shermer speaks with Barbara F. Walter about how civil wars start and how to stop them, including in the United States.

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Michael Shermer speaks with anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss about woke archaeology and erasing the past, based on her book Repatriation.

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In this episode, based on the book Free Speech, Michael Shermer and Jacob Mchangama discuss the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of the principle, how much we have gained from it, and how much we stand to lose without it.

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Michael Shermer speaks with author, journalist, and TV personality Nick Pope about UAPs, UFOs, conspiracies, and cover-ups.

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Michael Shermer speaks with American psychologist Dr. Frank J. Sulloway about the relative roles of genes, environment, hard work, and luck in how lives turn out. For decades, Dr. Sulloway has employed evolutionary theory to understand how family dynamics affect personality development.

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Michael Shermer Speaks with Johnjoe McFadden about his book Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe.

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In episode 243 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with psychiatrist Dr. Sally Satel about addiction, the opioid crisis, deaths of despair, and how psychiatry has gone woke.

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“How can we save the world from stories?” Michael Shermer speaks with Jonathan Gottschall about The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down. Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done.

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Michael Shermer speaks with writer, comedian, and five-time Emmy winning Senior Writer for John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, Jeff Maurer, about the nature of creativity, comedy, politics, culture, and how the television business really works!

Jeff Maurer won two Peabody Awards, five Writers Guild Awards, and four Television Critics Association awards. He was one of the original writers of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where he was promoted to Senior Writer. He left the show to write a political comedy called I Might Be Wrong: a podcast and several-times-weekly Substack column that covers politics and economics with a comedic voice. Instead of trying to interpret the world from a single viewpoint, Jeff picks apart the thinking behind the viewpoints and digs deep into policy.

Jeff’s early years were split between Kentucky, Virginia, and Washington State. He studied political science and economics at Georgetown (BA) and the University of Chicago (MA). After graduating, he served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, then returned to the US to become a speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency. He worked at the EPA for eight years, serving in the Office of Land Management and EPA’s Region 2 office in New York. While working for the EPA, Jeff began building a reputation as a standup comic. He was a semifinalist on Season 7 of Last Comic Standing, a finalist at the Great American Comedy Festival, and was featured on AXS TV’s Live at Gotham and Comcast on Demand Comedy. He became a regular at the Comedy Cellar in New York and performed at clubs and college across the US and Europe.

It was while performing standup that Jeff was spotted by John Oliver and a producer for The Daily Show. That led to him being hired as one of the original writers for Last Week Tonight, where he worked for six years. During his tenure, Jeff was promoted to Senior Writer and was the lead on pieces including Edward Snowden, International Trade, Confederacy, and Sex Education.

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We’ve all been told that thinking rationally is the key to success. But at the cutting edge of science, researchers are discovering that feeling is every bit as important as thinking.

You make hundreds of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how you should invest, and not one of those decisions would be possible without emotion. It has long been said that thinking and feeling are separate and opposing forces in our behavior. But as Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of Subliminal, tells us, extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have proven that emotions are as critical to our well-being as thinking.

How can you connect better with others? How can you make sense of your frustration, fear, and anxiety? What can you do to live a happier life? The answers lie in understanding your emotions. Journeying from the labs of pioneering scientists to real-world scenarios that have flirted with disaster, Mlodinow shows us how our emotions can help, why they sometimes hurt, and what we can learn in both instances.

Using deep insights into our evolution and biology, Mlodinow gives us the tools to understand our emotions better and to maximize their benefits. Told with his characteristic clarity and fascinating stories, Emotional explores the new science of feelings and offers us an essential guide to making the most of one of nature’s greatest gifts.

Leonard Mlodinow received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and was on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology. His previous books include the best sellers The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time (both with Stephen Hawking), Subliminal (winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award), The Drunkard’s Walk, and Elastic. His previous book, Stephen Hawking, was a memoir of his friendship with Hawking and their work together to understand the nature of the cosmos.

Shermer and Mlodinow discuss:

• What are emotions and how do they differ from feelings, moods, drives, & passions?
• How has the scientific understanding of emotions changed?
• thought vs. feeling, system 1 vs. system 2 cognition,
• the evolutionary origins of emotions: what are they “for”?
• mind-body connection: how does our physical state influence what we think & feel?
• the hard problem of conscious emotions,
• the neuroscience of emotions: how the brain constructs emotions,
• wanting vs. liking,
• the nature/nurture of emotions: which dominates when and where?
• Paul Ekman and the universal nature of emotions,
• Lisa Feldman Barrett challenge to Paul Ekman’s theory of universal emotions,
• Schachter-Singer theory of emotion and its competitors,
• the effects of social context on emotions,
• love, hate, anger, fear, disgust, pleasure/pain,
• hunger, thirst, lust, attraction, desires, passions,
• emotional profiles,
• managing your emotions, or channeling your inner stoic,
• witch crazes/pogroms: what were these people thinking and feeling?
• A.I. and emotions: Does Data have emotions? Does Watson know he won Jeopardy?
• the future of emotions: will we all feel the same once Western culture has spread globally through the Internet?

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

This episode is sponsored by Wondrium:

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We humans like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, who, as a species, have relied on calculation and intellect to survive. But many of the most important moments in our history had little to do with cold, hard facts and a lot to do with feelings. Events ranging from the origins of philosophy to the birth of the world’s major religions, the fall of Rome, the Scientific Revolution, and some of the bloodiest wars that humanity has ever experienced can’t be properly understood without understanding emotions.

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, art, and religious history, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes us on a fascinating and wide ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history—from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and beyond. A Human History of Emotion vividly illustrates how our understanding and experience of emotions has changed over time, and how our beliefs about feelings—and our feelings themselves—profoundly shaped us and the world we inhabit.

Richard Firth-Godbehere, PhD, one of the world’s leading experts on disgust and emotions, is an independent researcher and consultant in the history, language, science and philosophy of emotions, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, Queen Mary University of London. He received a first-class degree from the University of London, during which time he won two awards for academic excellence, alongside a Masters (MPhil) from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. From Queen Mary, University of London, where he was a Wellcome Trust Scholar. His award-winning interdisciplinary research walks the line between history, psychology, linguistics, and futurism. He examines how understandings of emotions change over time and how these changes can influence the wider world.

Shermer and Firth-Godbehere discuss:

• What are emotions and how do they differ from feelings, moods, and passions?
• How has the understanding of emotions changed historically and culturally?
• emotions in ancient Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians,
• the nature of “sin” in religious and secular contexts,
• the nature/nurture of emotions: which dominates when and where?
• Paul Ekman and the universal nature of emotions,
• Lisa Feldman Barrett challenge to Paul Ekman’s theory of universal emotions,
• rage circuit: amygdala-hypothalamus-periaqueductal gray,
• the effects of social context on emotions,
• love, hate, anger, fear, disgust, pleasure/pain,
• hunger, thirst, lust, attraction, desires, passions,
• emotional regimes,
• witch crazes: what were these people thinking and feeling?
• Schachter-Singer theory of emotion and its competitors,
• A.I. and emotions,
• the future of emotions: will we all feel the same once Western culture has spread globally through the Internet?

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

This episode is sponsored by Wondrium:

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Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they simply bad people? What sort of people aspire to power anyway? Are there individuals among us who should never be given the title of president, or CEO, or PTA leader lest they build their own dictatorship?

Brian Klaas, a renowned political scientist, Washington Post columnist and creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, has long sought answers to the above questions. In his new book Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders — from the noblest to the most crooked — including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators, to get to the root of power and corruption. Klaas dives into how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “beta” (second in command) may be the optimal place for health and well-being.

Featuring engrossing conversations with presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators, Brian Klaas has crafted the definitive exploration into power and corruption, a vital text to light the path to power for the right people not the wrong — and ensuring that power purifies rather than corrupts.

Brian Klaas grew up in Minnesota, earned his DPhil at Oxford, and is now a professor of global politics at University College London. He is also a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and frequent guest on national television. Klaas has conducted field research across the globe, interviewing despots, CEOs, torture victims, dissidents, cult leaders, criminals, and everyday power abusers. He has also advised major politicians and organizations including NATO, the European Union, and Amnesty International. You can find him at BrianPKlaas.com and on Twitter @brianklaas.

Shermer and Klaas discuss:

• Does power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power?
• Why so so many dictators have psychopathic tendencies?
• psychopathy: good and bad,
• The Dark Triad: Psychopathy, Machiavellian, Narcissism,
• authoritarian personalities,
• Why do factors like height and faces matter when we choose our leaders?
• Why do we use status symbols to signal power?
• common traits of dictators, CEOs, criminals, mafia, and the corruptible,
• Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, Bolsonaro, Orban, and the rise of authoritarianism,
• traits of positive leaders,
• physical characteristics of successful leaders (height, looks),
• Stanford Prison Experiment/Obedience to Authority Experiments,
• In-Group vs. Out-group biases and the polarization of politics,
• cult of personality,
• the Rajneesh cult movement,
• hierarchy and egalitarianism,
• hunter-gatherer societies vs. modern societies: must we adapt a hierarchical power structure?
• how to reform democratic governments to make them less susceptible to corruption.

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For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike — either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.

David Wengrow is a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has been a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of several books, including What Makes Civilization? Wengrow conducts archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.

David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on September 2, 2020.

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Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world.

In The Rule of Laws, Oxford scholar Fernanda Pirie traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, while also showing how common people — tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers — called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. Although legal principles originating in Western Europe now seem to dominate the globe, the variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.

Fernanda Pirie is professor of the anthropology of law at the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Anthropology of Law and has conducted fieldwork in the mountains of Ladakh and the grasslands of eastern Tibet. She earned a DPhil in Social Anthropology from Oxford in 2002, an MSc in Social Anthropology at University College London in 1998, and a BA in French and Philosophy from Oxford in 1986. She spent almost a decade practicing as a barrister at the London bar. She lives in Oxford, UK.

Shermer and Pirie discuss:

• Why do we need laws? Can’t we all just get along?

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” —James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51

• Kings of ancient Mesopotamia wrapped their laws in grand statements of social justice and the dictates of the gods.
• Biblical rules and laws: dietary, sexual, violence,
• Jewish and Islamic Scholars: God’s Path for the World
• Sharia Law,
• Chinese emperors claimed that the laws on which their authority rested were manifestations of the order of the cosmos.
• The world religions promulgated laws that were guides for living and a pathway to the afterlife, entangling church and state and setting the stage for struggles in medieval Europe to build secular systems of law.
• The age of Western empire brought with it ambitious efforts by European states to organize and legitimate their imperial conquests in a system of international law. Pirie shows that laws protect against the abuse of power but also serve as instruments of social control.
• Pirie argues that if the history of law has a common theme, it is that laws are not simply rules: they have a more overarching function in providing societies with shared identities and moral visions.
• Why anyone ever made law. It was often marginal to the success of government and maintaining order, but lawmakers made rules to establish their legitimacy, promise justice to their people, and set out their visions for a more civilized world.
• How laws have been used, since the earliest days, to resist power, define citizens’ rights, and hold rulers to account.
• slavery,
• colonialism,
• stateless law: tribes, villages, networks, and gangs: The Godfather,
• pirate laws,
• international law,
• crimes against humanity,
• Outlawry of War
• Quest for Cosmic Justice (Thomas Sowell)
• Governing Mars: what type of law should there be for the first Mars colonists?

Pirate Morality From Dr. Shermer’s Scientific American column (October, 2009) As the economist Peter Leeson shows in his pirate myth-busting book, The Invisible Hook, pirates were not, in fact, the criminally insane, traitorous terrorists of popular lore, in which anarchy was the rule and the rule of law was nonexistent. This piratical mythology can’t be true because ships packed full of riotous sociopaths, ruled by chaos and treachery, couldn’t possibly be successful at anything for any length of time. The truth was much less exciting and mysterious; pirate communities were “orderly and honest,” says Leeson, and had to be to meet buccaneers’ economic goal of turning a profit. “To cooperate for mutual gain — indeed, to advance their criminal organization at all — pirates needed to prevent their outlaw society from degenerating into bedlam.” So there is, after all, honor among thieves. As Adam Smith noted in The Wealth of Nations: “Society cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another…. If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least…abstain from robbing and murdering one another.”

Pirate societies provide evidence for Smith’s theory that economies are the result of bottom-up spontaneous self-organized order that naturally arises from social interactions. Leeson shows how pirate communities democratically elected their captains and quartermasters, and constructed constitutions that outlined rules about drinking, smoking, gambling, sex (no boys or women allowed on board), the use of fire and candles (a shipboard fire could prove disastrous for crew and cargo), fighting and disorderly conduct (the result of high testosterone risk-taking men confined in tight quarters for long stretches of time), desertion, and especially shirking one’s duties during battle. Like any other society, pirates had to deal with the “free rider” problem because the equitable division of loot among inequitable efforts would inevitably lead to resentment, retaliation and economic chaos.

Enforcement was key. Just as criminal courts required witnesses to swear on the Bible, pirate crews had to consent to the captain’s code before sailing. In the words of one observer: “All swore to ‘em, upon a Hatchet for want of a Bible. When ever any enter on board of these Ships voluntarily, they are obliged to sign all their Articles of Agreement,” in order “to prevent Disputes and Ranglings afterwards.” Leeson even tracked down the sharing of contractual arrangements between captains, made possible by the fact that “more than 70 percent of Anglo-American pirates active between 1716 and 1726, for example, can be connected back to one of three pirate captains.” Thus, the pirate code “emerged from piratical interactions and information sharing, not from a pirate king who centrally designed and imposed a common code on all current and future sea bandits.”

From whence, then, did the myth of piratical lawlessness and anarchy arise? It arose from the pirates themselves, naturally, in whose best interests it was to perpetuate the myth in order to minimize losses and maximize profits. They flew the Jolly Roger to signal their reputation for mayhem but, in fact, the pirates didn’t actually want a fight, because fighting is costly and dangerous and might result in economic loss. Pirates just want booty, and they prefer a low-risk surrender to a high-risk battle. From the merchant’s perspective, the nonviolent surrender of their booty was also preferable to fighting back, because violence is costly to them too. Of course, to maintain a reputation that you are a badass, you actually have to occasionally be a badass, so pirates intermittently engaged in violence, reports of which they happily provided to newspaper editors, who duly published them in gory and exaggerated detail. As the 18th-century English pirate Captain Sam Bellamy explained, “I scorn to do any one a Mischief, when it is not for my Advantage.” Leeson concludes, “By signaling pirates’ identity to potential targets, the Jolly Roger prevented bloody battle that would needlessly injure or kill not only pirates, but also innocent merchant seamen.”

Outlawry of War From Dr. Shermer’s Scientific American, December 2017 War was outlawed in 1928.

In their history of how this happened, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (Simon & Schuster, 2017), Yale University legal scholars Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro begin with the contorted legal machinations of lawyers, legislators, and politicians in the 17th century that made war, in the words of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, “the continuation of politics by other means.” Those means included a license to kill other people, take their stuff, and occupy their land. Legally. How?

In 1625 the renowned Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius penned a 500-page legal justification for his country’s capture of the Portuguese merchant ship Santa Catarina when those two countries were at war. The Law of War and Peace argued, in short, that if individuals have rights that can be defended through courts, then nations have rights that can be defended through war because there was no world court.

As a consequence, nations have felt at liberty for four centuries to justify their bellicosity through “war manifestos,” legal statements outlining their “just causes” for “just wars.” Hathaway and Shapiro compiled over 400 such documents into a database on which they conducted a content analysis. The most common rationalizations for war were self-defense (69 percent); enforcing treaty obligations (47 percent); compensation for tortious injuries (42 percent); violations of the laws of war or law of nations (35 percent); stopping those who would disrupt the balance of power (33 percent); and protection of trade interests (19 percent). These war manifestos are, in short, an exercise in motivated reasoning employing the confirmation bias, the hindsight bias, and other cognitive heuristics to justify a predetermined end. Instead of “I came, I saw, I conquered,” these declarations read more like “I was just standing there minding my own business when he threatened me. I had to defend myself by attacking him.” The problem with this arrangement is obvious. Call it the moralization bias: the belief that our cause is moral and just and anyone who disagrees is not just wrong but immoral.

In 1917, with the carnage of the First World War evident to all, a Chicago corporate lawyer named Salmon Levinson reasoned, “We should have, not as now, laws of war, but laws against war; just as there are no laws of murder or of poisoning, but laws against them.” With the support of philosopher John Dewey, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, and U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, Levinson’s dream of war outlawry came to fruition with the “General Pact for the Renunciation of War,” or the Peace Pact, or the Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed in Paris in 1928. War was outlawed.

Given the number of wars since, what happened? The moralization bias was dialed up to eleven, of course, but there was also a lack of enforcement. That began to change after the ruinous Second World War, when the concept of “outcasting” took hold, the most common example being economic sanctions. “Instead of doing something to the rule breakers, Hathaway and Shapiro explain, “outcasters refuse to do something with the rule breakers.” This principle of exclusion doesn’t always work (Cuba, Russia), but sometimes it does (Turkey, Iran), and it is almost always better than war. The result, the researchers show, is that “interstate war has declined precipitously and conquests have almost completely disappeared.”

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Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, he has written over thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture. His bold and unsentimental assaults on liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many readers but have also enraged fellow intellectuals, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media. The result has been a lack of acknowledgment of his scholarship among critics who prioritize political correctness.

In the first-ever biography of Sowell, Jason Riley gives this iconic thinker his due and responds to the detractors. Maverick showcases Sowell’s most significant writings and traces the life events that shaped his ideas and resulted in a Black orphan from the Jim Crow South becoming one of our foremost public intellectuals.

Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several previous books, including Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.

Shermer and Riley discuss:

• the unconventional upbringing and education of Thomas Sowell,
• Riley’s documentary film: Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World,
• Sowell work in economics, defined as “the efficient allocation of limited resources that have alternative uses,”
• Sowell’s philosophy that “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.” (Photography analogy: if you close down the aperture you get everything in focus but lose light. All policies have trade-offs.),
• school choice/vouchers,
• mismatch theory and affirmative action,
• What is the appeal of Marxism, communism, socialism, progressivism?
• immigration and open borders: let the market decide?
• race and IQ,
• why he thinks liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed,
• political correctness, cancel culture and identity politics,
• BLM and antiracism,
• reparations: what do we owe others?
• private vs. public charity/welfare,
• income inequality and UBI,
• minimum wage,
• why he thinks economic success is a more important strategy for the empowerment of black people than dependence on political leadership,
• Do we have a moral obligation to help those who cannot help themselves?
• what it means to be a conservative or a Republican post-Trump,
• Sowell’s The Quest for Cosmic Justice applied to religions and faux religions (Marxism, Wokeism),
• Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions.

Supplemental material from Dr. Shermer’s book The Believing Brain In his book A Conflict of Visions, the economist Thomas Sowell argued that these two clusters of moral values are intimately linked to the vision one holds about human nature, either as constrained (conservative) or unconstrained (liberal), and so he calls these the Constrained Vision and the Unconstrained Vision. Sowell shows that controversies over a number of seemingly unrelated social issues such as taxes, welfare, social security, health care, criminal justice, and war repeatedly reveal a consistent ideological dividing line along these two conflicting visions.

“If human options are not inherently constrained, then the presence of such repugnant and disastrous phenomena virtually cries out for explanation—and for solutions. But if the limitations and passions of man himself are at the heart of these painful phenomena, then what requires explanation are the ways in which they have been avoided or minimized.”

Which of these natures you believe is true will largely shape which solutions to social ills will be most effective.

“In the unconstrained vision, there are no intractable reasons for social evils and therefore no reason why they cannot be solved, with sufficient moral commitment. But in the constrained vision, whatever artifices or strategies restrain or ameliorate inherent human evils will themselves have costs, some in the form of other social ills created by these civilizing institutions, so that all that is possible is a prudent trade-off.”

It’s not that conservatives think that we’re evil and liberals believe we’re perfectible.

“Implicit in the unconstrained vision is the notion that the potential is very different from the actual, and that means exist to improve human nature toward its potential, or that such means can be evolved or discovered, so that man will do the right thing for the right reason, rather than for ulterior psychic or economic rewards. Man is, in short, ‘perfectible’—meaning continually improvable rather than capable of actually reaching absolute perfection.”

In his masterpiece analysis of human nature, The Blank Slate, the psychologist Steven Pinker re-labels these two visions the Tragic Vision and the Utopian Vision and reconfigures them slightly: “The Utopian Vision seeks to articulate social goals and devise policies that target them directly: economic inequality is attacked in a war on poverty, pollution by environmental regulations, racial imbalances by preferences, carcinogens by bans on food additives. The Tragic Vision points to the self-interested motives of the people who would implement these policies—namely, the expansion of their bureaucratic fiefdoms—and to their ineptitude at anticipating the myriad consequences, especially when the social goals are pitted against millions of people pursuing their own interests.” The distinct Left-Right divide consistently cleaves the (respectively) Utopian Vision and Tragic Vision along numerous specific contests, such as the size of the government (big versus small), the amount of taxation (high versus low), trade (fair versus free), healthcare (universal versus individual), environment (protect it versus leave it alone), crime (caused by social injustice versus caused by criminal minds), the constitution (judicial activism for social justice versus strict constructionism for original intent), and many others

From a previous podcast episode with the Director of the London School of Economics, Minouche Shafik, based on her book What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society: “First, that everyone should be guaranteed the minimum required to live a decent life. This minimum should include basic health care, education, benefits associated with work and a pension that protects against poverty in old age, with the level depending on how much society can afford. Second, everyone should be expected to contribute as much as they can and be given the maximum opportunities to do so with training throughout life, later retirement ages and public support for childcare so women can work. Third, the provision of minimum protections around some risks, such as sickness, unemployment and old age, are better shared by society, rather than asking individuals, families or employers to carry them.”

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A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened.

In this conversation based on the uniquely insightful book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, Matt Ridley reviews how he and his co-author Alina Chan have tried to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometers away in the city of Wuhan. They grapple with the baffling fact that the virus left none of the expected traces that such outbreaks usually create: no infected market animals or wildlife, no chains of early cases in travelers to the city, no smoldering epidemic in a rural area, no rapid adaptation of the virus to its new host — human beings.

To try to solve this pressing mystery, Ridley delves deep into the events of 2019 leading up to 2021, the details of what went on in animal markets and virology laboratories, the records and data hidden from sight within archived Chinese theses and websites, and the clues that can be coaxed from the very text of the virus’s own genetic code.

Dr. Matt Ridley is the author of books that have sold well over a million copies in 32 languages: The Red Queen, The Origins of Virtue, Genome, Nature via Nurture, Francis Crick, The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, and How Innovation Works. In his bestseller Genome and in his biography of Francis Crick, he showed an ability to translate the details of genomic discoveries into understandable and exciting stories. During the current pandemic, he has written essays for the Wall Street Journal and The Spectator about the origin and genomics of the virus. He is a member of the House of Lords in the UK.

Dr. Alina Chan is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in medical genetics, synthetic biology, and vector engineering. At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Dr. Chan is currently creating next generation vectors for human gene therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Chan began to investigate problems relevant to finding the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and in parallel spearheaded the development of the COVID-19 CoV Genetics browser for scientists worldwide to rapidly track virus lineages and mutations by locations and date ranges of interest.

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Michael Shermer shares his thoughts on life and death in an emotional remembrance of his friend and business partner of 30 years, Pat Linse (1947–2021), the co-founder of the Skeptics Society and Art Director of Skeptic magazine.

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Research shows we are missing 50 percent of our lives because we aren’t paying attention. From the constant buzz of your phone and the lure of your media feed to your unrelenting, all-encompassing, and ever-growing mental to-do list — the demands on your attention have never been so severe. The result is an escalating crisis, where we feel mentally foggy, scattered, and overwhelmed. Remarkably, the solution to our attention crisis has been right here in front of us.

In this conversation with the acclaimed neuroscientist Amishi Jha, she shows why whether you’re simply browsing, talking to friends, or trying to stay focused in an important meeting, you can’t seem to manage to hang on to your attention. Why is it that no matter how hard you try, you seem to find yourself somewhere else — if you’re even aware you’ve drifted off to that place. Dr. Jha recounts her neuroscience research revealing that, in fact, there’s nothing wrong with you — your brain isn’t broken. The human brain evolved to be distractible. And there’s even better news: You can train your brain to pay attention more effectively.

Dr. Amishi P. Jha is professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California–Davis and postdoctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University. Dr. Jha’s work has been featured at NATO, the World Economic Forum, and The Pentagon. She has received coverage for the New York Times, NPR, TIME, Forbes and more. Watch her TED Talk on “How to Tame Your Wandering Mind” with 5 million+ views.

Shermer and Jha discuss:

• her personal experiences that led her to study the neuroscience of attention,
• how the mind works: from basic rationality to mind reading (theory of mind) to mental travel,
• what attention evolved to do,
• how attention is powerful, fragile, and trainable,
• how attention is diverted: depleted attention, hijacked attention, fragmented attention, disconnected attention,
• gorilla inattentional blindness,
• police and military: distorted attention bias,
• stress and attention,
• negativity bias and attention,
• thought flooding and attention,
• active listening and attention,
• multitasking,
• the attention economy: from legacy media to social media,
• new neuroscience research on how to train attention,
• how to find your focus through the “flashlight” metaphor of attention,
• how to live in the “now” without neglecting the past and the future,
• how biased thinking affects attention and clarity,
• meta-awareness: how to pay attention to your attention,
• exercises in how to improve your attention and achieve peak mind, and
• mindfulness and well-being.

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In this conversation with Jason Hill based on his book What do White Americans Owe Black People? Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Oppression, Shermer probes the philosopher on the arguments for and against reparations.

In this provocative and highly original work, philosophy professor Jason Hill explores multiple dimensions of race in America today, but most importantly, a black-white divide which has grown exponentially over the past decade.

Central to his thesis, Hill calls on black American leaders (and their white liberal sponsors) to escape from the cycle of blame and finger-pointing, which seeks to identify black failures with white hatred and indifference. This overblown narrative is promulgated by a phalanx of black nihilists who advocate the destruction of America and her institutions in the name of ending “whiteness.” Much of the black intelligentsia consists of these false prophets, and it is their poisonous ideology which is taught, uncontradicted, to students of all races. It is they who are responsible for the cultural depression blacks are suffering in today’s society.

Ultimately, the answer to “what do White Americans owe?” is not about the morality or practicality of reparations, affirmative action, or other redistributionist schemes. Hill rejects the collectivist premise behind the argument, instead couching notions of culpability, justice, and fairness as responsibilities of individuals, not arbitrary racial or ethnic groupings.

Jason Hill is a professor of philosophy and Honors Distinguished Faculty at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author of five books, including We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People. He specializes in ethics, politics, foreign policy, and moral psychology.

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss230_Bart_Ehrman_2021_11_22.mp3 Download MP3 In this conversation with the renowned biblical scholar and historian, Bart Ehrman reviews the highlights of his forthcoming live seminar on December 5. In addition to that, Shermer and Ehrman discuss:

• how we know Jesus existed and was crucified,
• how these questions are different epistemologically from those about Jesus’ resurrection and the claim that he died for our sins,
• how Christians deal with the trinity problem: How can God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit be one and the same and yet separate and different? “God sacrificed himself…to himself…to save us from himself.” How is this possible?
• how Christians answer these question: Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? Why couldn’t God just forgive us for our sins?
• Why was the virgin birth so important to early Christians?
• Why was the resurrection so important to early Christians?
• Anti-Semitism in the early Christian church (“the Jews killed Jesus” or “the Jews killed God”) and why it makes no theological sense (Jesus was Jewish, and if he had to die to save us from our sins, whoever killed Jesus should be thanked),
• why Jews and Muslims do not believe that Jesus was the messiah,
• how Jesus became God and how Christianity grew from a few dozen followers at the time of Jesus’s death to over two billion followers today,
• theodicy and the problem of evil: Why does an all powerful, all knowing, all good God allow people to suffer?

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LIVE SEMINAR WITH DR. BART EHRMAN DEC 5

Did the Christmas Story Really Happen? The Birth of Jesus in History and Legend

Live Seminar Dec. 5, 2021

6:30am – 1pm PST / 9:30am – 4pm EST

$39.95 Early Bird Price (ends Nov. 28 at 9am PST, then $49.95)

BONUS! Registration includes lifetime access to seminar recording ($79.95 value)

• What can we actually know about the birth of Jesus?
• How can we decide whether he was born in Bethlehem?
• Is it possible to reconcile the different Gospel accounts?
• Was the story of the Virgin Birth a later fabrication?
• What is the evidence for (or against) the many details, such as the trip to Bethlehem, the visit of the wisemen, and the “slaughter of the innocents”?
• How many of the most familiar parts of the stories come from later legends?

Register now

Dr. Bart D. Ehrman has written or edited thirty-three books, including six New York Times bestsellers: How Jesus Became God, Misquoting Jesus, God’s Problem, Jesus Interrupted, Forged, and The Triumph of Christianity. Bart is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taught thousands of students and won numerous awards. Ehrman’s work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek; he has appeared on National Geographic, CNN, the BBC, NBC’s Dateline, the Discovery Channel, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Sam Harris Podcast, and many other top media outlets.

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Fritjof Capra, scientist, educator, activist, and accomplished author, presents the evolution of his thought over five decades in Patterns of Connection. First introduced in the late 1950s to the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, Capra’s connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy resulted in his first book, the bestselling The Tao of Physics. This synthesis, representative of the change from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton to a systemic, ecological one, went on to inform Capra’s thinking about the life sciences, ecology, and environmental policy. Fritjof Capra remains a major figure at the crossroads of physics, spirituality, environmentalism, and systems theory.

Fritjof Capra is the recipient of many awards, including the Gold Medal of the UK Systems Society, the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic, the Bioneers Award, the New Dimensions Broadcaster Award, and the American Book Award. He became universally known for his book The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, which explored the ways in which modern physics was changing our worldview from a mechanistic to a holistic and ecological one. Capra lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and daughter.

Shermer and Capra discuss:

• from Austria to Berkeley: the making of a California holist,
• the influence of Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy,
• 50 years of progress or regress (since the publication of The Turning Point),
• the 1960s counterculture and challenges to authority,
• metaphors in science: world as machine, world as alive,
• limitations of models and theories of reality,
• limitations of analogies between western physics and eastern mysticism,
• Stephen Jay Gould’s critical review of The Tao of Physics and Capra’s response (“Gould was right!”),
• mind and consciousness,
• the Santiago theory of consciousness,
• what it means to be spiritual in an age of science,
• nuclear energy and why Capra thinks we don’t need it and Shermer thinks we do,
• how systems theory allows for human volition and free will, and
• why Capra is hopeful for the future of humanity.

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This episode is sponsored by Wondrium:

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According to Steven Koonin, when it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that “the science is settled.” Koonin avers that the long game of telephone from research to reports, to the popular media, is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Koonin says that core questions about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be remain largely unanswered. Koonin acknowledges that the climate is changing, and claims the why and how aren’t as clear as you’ve probably been led to believe.

Now, one of America’s most distinguished scientists is clearing away the fog to explain what science really says (and doesn’t say) about our changing climate. In Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, Steven Koonin draws upon his decades of experience — including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration — to provide up-to-date insights and expert perspective free from political agendas.

Michael Shermer challenges Dr. Koonin with many of the most common critiques of his book, to which he responds.

Dr. Steven Koonin is a University Professor at New York University, with appointments in the Stern School of Business, the Tandon School of Engineering, and the Department of Physics. He founded NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, which focuses research and education on the acquisition, integration, and analysis of big data for big cities. He served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Obama from 2009 to 2011, where his portfolio included the climate research program and energy technology strategy. He was the lead author of the US Department of Energy’s Strategic Plan (2011) and the inaugural Department of Energy Quadrennial Technology Review (2011). Before joining the government, Dr. Koonin spent five years as Chief Scientist for BP, researching renewable energy options to move the company “beyond petroleum.” For almost thirty years, Dr. Koonin was a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech. He also served for nine years as Caltech’s Vice President and Provost, facilitating the research of more than 300 scientists and engineers and catalyzing the development of the world’s largest optical telescope, as well as research initiatives in computational science, bioengineering, and the biological sciences. In addition to the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Koonin’s memberships include the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and JASON, the group of scientists who solve technical problems for the US government; he served as JASON’s chair for six years.

Skeptic magazine has published two articles explaining how we know that global warming is real and human caused:

• “How We Know Global Warming is Real” (Dr. Tapio Schneider)
• “How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused” (Donald R. Prothero)

Shermer and Koonin discuss:

• The five basic questions about climate change:
  1. Is the Earth getting warmer?
  2. Is human activity the primary driver of the warming?
  3. How much warmer is it going to get?
  4. What are the effects of the warming?
  5. What should we do about it?
• climate consensus (the 97% figure). Here’s what Dr. Shermer wrote in Scientific American: