Hello, I'm Dr. Stephen Hassan with another episode of the influence continuum.

And boy, am I excited about this interview about a very important topic and book called

Conspiracy.

I have a guest that I've actually known for decades, Michael,

way back to the James Randy era,

and your founding of Skeptic Magazine, you are the founding publisher.

And I just say a few things about your allotatory credentials.

You have a podcast called the Michael Shermer Show.

You're a presidential fellow at Chapman University where you teach skepticism 101,

which is awesome.

You have been doing a monthly column for Scientific American for 18 years. Wow. And you have a substack column and you have

written so many great books. I will call out one that I use regularly, Michael, on my cases

called The Believing Brain, which has particularly really helped me understand. And this

book, conspiracy is based on that understanding, which we'll talk about. You've been everywhere on

every talk show, every major thing. And I'll just add that you have an interesting credentials in education

in psychology, experimental psychology, and your PhD is in the history of science. And with that,

I want to hold up your book. And I really think this is a major contribution to everyone because frankly, there

are millions of people walking around with conspiracy theories on the left, on the right, in the

middle, and sorting out the differences between actual conspiracies that you talk about in the book and name properly,

and trying to then talk about effective ways to interact, which I think is especially valuable

in this day and time. And so with that, Michael, I'll just add one more personal thing. My thanks to you for having

me out when you were at Caltech to speak decades ago, and you had a TV show exploring the

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