Gide, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. And what dangerous idea could be more

dangerous than a conspiracy theory. A good conspiracy theory. Do you believe any? What do you think

happened when JFK was assassinated? Do you have an opinion? Do you sometimes, what do you think

about like UFOs and all of these sightings and so on?

How do we think about theories that are unconventional that you wouldn't necessarily

regard as being totally crackpot, but that don't have the imprimatur, imprimatur, I should

say, of officialdom, that like, you know, scientists and rationalists

would poo-poo. One person who does much such poo-pooing and coppsom flak for it is Michael Shermer.

He spent his life as a skeptic. For nearly 20 years from 2001 to 2019, he wrote the skeptic

column in Scientific American, the prestigious magazine.

He's contributed to Time magazine.

He is the publisher of Skeptic Magazine and has a podcast called The Michael Shermer Show.

He has all kinds of academic credentials and very important things.

He's been on the Joe Rogan podcast, a number of times which you might have heard him on.

His latest book is called Conspiracy, Why the Rational, Believe the Irrational, which is a bit

of a must read for understanding conspiracy theories and the people who believe them and how

to counter them and what you should believe and shouldn't believe.

So I wanted to pick his brain about what it's okay to believe, what it's not okay to believe, what it's rational to believe, what it's irrational to believe, and whether we're seeing a rise in

irrationalism in the world, and if so, how to counter it. This is a wonderful rambling

conversation that goes all the way across COVID to lockdowns, to wokeism, to religiosity,

to Jordan Peterson, to whatever else.

I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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