267. Louis Theroux on Neo-Nazis, Jimmy Savile, UFO Cults, and Scientology
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2022
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shermer and Theroux discuss: how documentary films are made • religious fanaticism and why people believe • UFO cults, end-times sects, and cognitive dissonance • Scientology: religion or cult? • neo-Nazis and anti-Semitism • prisons, pornography, and prostitution • Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Savile • self-help movements and gurus • deception and self-deception • social proof and human conformity • are humans naturally rational, irrational, or both?
Louis Theroux is a genre-defining documentary filmmaker best known for his explorations of controversial and complex topics. Using a gentle questioning style and an informal approach, Louis has shone light on intriguing beliefs, behaviors, and institutions by getting to know the people at the heart of them — from the officers and inmates at San Quentin prison to the extreme believers of the Westboro Baptist Church; from male porn performers in California to young women with eating disorders in London.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower Show. |
| 0:19.0 | Hello everyone, it's Michael Sherman here for the Michael Sherman show. Nice to see you all again. Reminder. |
| 0:21.0 | This is my day job publishing Skeptic magazine, our latest issue |
| 0:25.0 | on Trans Matters. It's one of our best-selling ones so far. Be sure and get it. Go to |
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| 0:34.7 | podcast here, please go to Skeptic.com slash donate. That's what supports the |
| 0:39.0 | podcast. Your donations are tax deductible as the Skeptic Society is a 501c3 nonprofit and we really |
| 0:46.2 | appreciate that. My guest today is Louis Thoreau, who in the UK is extremely famous as a genre-defining documentary filmmaker best known for |
| 0:56.5 | his explorations of controversial and complex topics. |
| 1:01.0 | Using a gentle questioning style and an informal approach, |
| 1:04.0 | Louis has shown light on intriguing beliefs, behaviors, and institutions |
| 1:08.0 | by getting to know the people at the heart of them, |
| 1:10.0 | from the officers and inmates at San Quentin prison to the extreme believers of them. From the officers and inmates at San Quentin Prison to the extreme |
| 1:14.1 | believers of the Westboro Baptist Church who my followers here will be |
| 1:19.0 | familiar with as well as male porn performers in California to a young woman with eating disorders in London. |
| 1:26.3 | Louis graduated from Oxford in 1991. |
| 1:29.3 | He got his break in television in 1994 working for it, none other than Michael Moore the American |
| 1:34.4 | documentary filmmaker who hired him as a writer and correspondent for his TV |
| 1:38.6 | show TV Nation. He then went on to make Bathut winning series. |
| 1:44.0 | Louis Throws Weird Weekends. |
| 1:47.0 | When Louis met with a series of famous people |
| 1:50.0 | that he got to know and hung around with the camera group and a series of |
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