Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 141 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Michael Schurmer, editor of Skeptic magazine.

He's also written over a dozen non-fiction books, including Why believe weird things, why Darwin matters, and the

minds of the market. His latest book is called The Moral Arc, how science and reason lead

humanity toward truth, justice, and freedom. And now here's our interview with Michael Schurmer.

All right, so we're here with Michael Schurmer.

Welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks for having me.

Okay, and so your new book is called The Moral Arc.

So what's that about?

Well, so the subtitle pretty much explains the thesis,

which is that how science and reason lead humanity toward truth, justice, and freedom.

So I'm basically emphasizing the role of the scientific revolution and the subsequent age of reason and the enlightenment

as major drivers of moral progress over the past three centuries.

That is to say like the great

the great scientific revolutionaries like Copernicus and Kepler

and Galileo and Newton, basically all discovered

that the universe is governed by natural laws that can be understood and applied to

social problems, political problems, economic problems, moral issues.

And that's what we've been doing ever since.

So I think, amongst the many different factors, even though some of them are political or economic or whatever that have changed

...