100. Episode Special: Ask Me Almost Anything
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.4 • 921 Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2020
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this 100th episode of the Science Salon podcast Dr. Shermer gives a brief overview and history of the salon and how it evolved from the Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, which began in 1992, along with the founding of the Skeptics Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit science education organization, and it’s publication Skepticmagazine. Following this brief history Dr. Shermer answers questions sent to him on social media, on such topics as:
- ETIs and the chances we’ve been visited by aliens
- Generic Subjective Continuity, a secular version of reincarnation, and what happens after we die
- Trump-style propaganda and how to deal with it
- Should we separate artist from artwork, e.g., Michael Jackson’s music or Adolf Hitler’s paintings?
- Eliminative Materialism (a type of determinism) and its implication for moral progress
- How reliable are eyewitnesses, particularly those in the Bible, particularly with regard to stories about miracles?
- When did you first learn that we are made of stardust and how did this change your thinking?
- How much power do Christian Nationalists have in the U.S. today?
- Have you changed your mind about science, religion, health, and politics in the past ten years?
- Will we ever reach an end of scientific knowledge and understanding?
Listen to Science Salon via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science A Lot, a series of conversations |
| 0:10.4 | with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time. |
| 0:17.0 | This is the 100th episode of the Science Salon Podcast, so we're going to make it an AMA and ask me anything. |
| 0:28.0 | And I'm going to start by announcing that we have a relationship now with the great courses. |
| 0:34.1 | We're, they're sponsoring the podcast |
| 0:37.4 | and we're promoting their great courses plus program, |
| 0:41.7 | which is a streaming program. |
| 0:44.1 | So instead of purchasing an entire course, |
| 0:47.6 | you purchase a subscription, a monthly subscription to it, |
| 0:51.7 | and you can get any of the courses, hundreds and |
| 0:55.0 | hundreds of them, and access to individual lectures and you can skip around and |
| 0:59.6 | try different ones or listen to entire courses. |
| 1:02.7 | As most of you know who follow me on social media, |
| 1:05.1 | I consume a lot of content, podcasts, other people's podcasts, |
| 1:10.0 | audio books and especially great courses, the great courses plus is really nice. |
| 1:16.5 | It's just an app on your phone, you touch it and you scroll through hundreds of different |
| 1:20.3 | courses and touch on one and then touch on the lecture you want to hear and you're |
| 1:26.2 | off and running. It's great. So the program they're offering this month and we're launching it here with the AMA, 100th episode, is that |
| 1:38.9 | listeners can get three months of unlimited access for just $30. |
| 1:44.8 | So that's just $10 a month. |
| 1:47.3 | So to do that, you get this access |
| 1:51.6 | for three months, $30, $10 a month by going to my special |
... |
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