#2 — Michael Shermer | Death, How To Avoid It, and Why You Shouldn't be Afraid
Within Reason
Alex J O'Connor
4.9 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2019
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr Michael Shermer is an American historian of science, editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, and author of nearly 20 books, including Heavens On Earth, The Moral Arc, and Why People Believe Weird Things. He speaks to Alex about how we should respond to the inevitability of death, and why we shouldn't be afraid of it.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode of the Cosmic Skeptic podcast is brought to you by you. |
| 0:04.2 | To support the podcast, please visit patreon. Today I'm joined by Dr. Michael |
| 0:40.2 | Shermer, who is a historian of science, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Skeptic, and a monthly contributor to Scientific American. |
| 0:47.5 | He's also the author or co-author of nearly 20 books. I think it's sitting at 19 right now, if I'm not |
| 0:52.3 | mistaken, including the most recent, |
| 1:13.8 | which is Heavens on Earth, a book that I'm hoping to discuss today. So, Dr. Shermer, thank you for being here. Yeah, here's actually the UK cover. Oh, you know, somebody sent me this. That's quite funny. It's the wrong way around. Somebody sent me this from the US. This is actually a signed version, which I think someone picked up at your event with Frank Turek. |
| 1:13.4 | That's either wrong way around. Somebody sent me this from the US. This is actually a signed version, which I think someone picked up at your event with Frank Turek. |
| 1:14.4 | That's either this or another event that we did. |
| 1:15.8 | Right. |
| 1:16.8 | Yeah, and I watched that online and that was quite an interesting debate that you guys had. |
| 1:20.4 | But okay, so what I wanted to talk about essentially is the book, but mainly focusing on the concept of death, which is something that |
| 1:29.6 | you talk about a lot, and where the afterlife kind of came from that, and how the human psychology |
| 1:34.7 | and how socially we are reacting to the concept of death. So I suppose for a start, if you could |
| 1:41.2 | just give a sort of brief overview of the purpose of the book and what |
| 1:44.6 | it was you were trying to do with it and kind of an overview of the contents before we get going. |
| 1:49.8 | Yeah, so Heavens on Earth was something of an extension of my previous work. I've written on |
| 1:54.6 | science and pseudoscience and science and religion and science and morality, science and politics and economics. |
| 2:02.3 | So it was sort of a natural extension to write about really the biggest subject of all, I guess, |
| 2:06.4 | is the afterlife and immortality and what happens when you die and so forth. |
| 2:11.4 | But the main focus of the book is not so much on the religious versions of the afterlife |
| 2:17.0 | and what scientists think about that, |
| 2:20.0 | although I have a big chapter on that, a couple chapters on that. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Alex J O'Connor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Alex J O'Connor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.