E375. How to Find Truth When Everything Feels Fake - Michael Shermer

Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy

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4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Shermer returns for a fascinating conversation about the crisis of truth in our polarized, AI-driven world. He and Bridget discuss the fate of print magazines, shrinking attention spans, the challenges of discerning reality amid deepfakes, misinformation, and Shermer’s new book Truth: What It Is, How To Find It, and Why It Still Matters. They cover political violence, ICE controversies, the power of belief to shape actions (and self-fulfilling prophecies), human gullibility, the repli...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Some important context. This episode is recorded January 13th after the Renee Good shooting, but before the Alex Preti shooting.
0:08.3	Because we are in hell. All right. I'm with Michael Shermer, everybody. Welcome back to Walkins. Welcome. Good to see you.
0:16.5	Nice to see you, Bridget. How are you doing these days? I know it has been a while.
0:21.0	What have you been up to?
0:22.9	Well, living the dream here in Santa Barbara, ride my bike and writing my books and doing
0:27.7	the podcast and publishing the magazine.
0:30.2	I've been doing that since 1992.
0:33.0	Still my day job.
0:34.9	Okay.
0:35.4	Yep.
0:35.8	Yep.
0:36.3	And how is the magazine skeptic going?
0:39.4	Pretty well, you know, we've made the transition from print only in bookstores, you know, which
0:44.5	was old school.
0:45.3	And now pretty much every issue, more slide over to the digital versions and fewer and fewer print
0:53.1	in bookstore.
0:54.2	So, you know, we're hanging in there.
0:56.9	You know, here's what it, just to remind you of what it looks like.
1:00.4	You know, there's a recent issue on race.
1:04.2	Yeah, it's a tough business.
1:05.4	I mean, there's not a lot of advertising dollars to be chased.
1:09.3	You know, those are now all online.
	...

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