social justice

Shermer and Gold discuss: diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media • social justice movements and their motivations • bias in STEM fields • why people believe weird things • exorcism • UFOs • faith healers • Derren Brown and how magic works on minds • hypnosis • sex and where to have an affair • Ashley Madison • female/male differences in sexual preferences and choices • non-offending pedophiles in Berlin • the curious case of Jimmy Seville: why didn’t anyone notice his pedophilia?

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is, at root, an American phenomenon. So thoroughly is this the case that although its ideas have been used outside the United States for some time, they are often highly flavored by U.S. racial history. CRT holds that race is a social construct that was created to maintain White privilege and […]

Shermer and Doyle discuss: terminology of: PC, identity politics, woken, social justice, antifa, BLM, TERF, intersectionality • Critical Social Justice as a witch craze • Satanic Panic (1980s) • Recovered Memory Movement (1990s) • How widespread is the problem: minor skirmishes on social media or mainstream? • Hill-Harris 2021 poll: 32% voters ID as woke and 31% said they don’t know what the term means • new puritanism as a secular religion • Whiteness and White fragility • Implicit Association Test • Postmodernism • Neo-Marxism • Cancel Culture • hate speech • J.K. Rowling • pluralistic ignorance.

Michael Shermer and professor of psychiatry, Sally Satel, discuss: how political correctness has corrupted medicine • how wokeness and social justice activism has corrupted psychiatry • What is social justice and who is really practicing it? • medical models of mental illness • why mental illness is so hard to treat • medical models of addiction: where they succeed, where they fail • how addictions are treated • Can one be addicted to porn? • Can one be addicted to social media? • The opioid crisis: who is responsible? and more…
In episode 243 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with psychiatrist Dr. Sally Satel about addiction, the opioid crisis, deaths of despair, and how psychiatry has gone woke.

In episode 236, Michael Shermer speaks with Fernanda Pirie on The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World — from ancient Mesopotamia to today, the epic story of how humans have used laws to forge civilizations.
In episode 236, Michael Shermer speaks with Fernanda Pirie on The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World — from ancient Mesopotamia to today, the epic story of how humans have used laws to forge civilizations.

In episode 231, Michael Shermer has a conversation with Jason Hill based on his book What do White Americans Owe Black People? Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Oppression. Shermer probes the philosopher on the arguments for and against reparations.
In episode 231, Michael Shermer has a conversation with Jason Hill based on his book What do White Americans Owe Black People? Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Oppression. Shermer probes the philosopher on the arguments for and against reparations.
In this essay, published on Substack today, Dr. Shermer addresses several recent articles in Scientific American of a distinctly unscientific nature related to progressive woke politics, perhaps in obedience to the British historian and Sovietologist Robert Conquest’s eponymous law that “any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

In a wide-ranging conversation Shermer and Richard Nisbett discuss Nisbett’s research showing how people reason, how people should reason, why errors in reasoning occur, and how much you can improve reasoning.
Michael Shermer is now writing on Substack with a new, weekly column called Skeptic: Examining the World Through a Scientific Lens. PLUS in a wide-ranging conversation Shermer and Richard Nisbett discuss Nisbett’s research showing how people reason, how people should reason, why errors in reasoning occur, and how much you can improve reasoning.

In episode 163 of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer speaks with Helen Pluckrose about her book (co-authored with James Lindsay) Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody.
Skeptic Magazine 26.1: Cosmic Beginning is Available Now! Instantly Download the Digital Edition or Pre-order the Print Edition Today. PLUS: In episode 163 of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer speaks with Helen Pluckrose about her book (co-authored with James Lindsay) Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity — and Why This Harms Everybody.

In this special episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer catches up with Douglas Murray one year after the publication of his bestselling book The Madness of Crowds, now out in paperback, with an Afterword update on all that has happened the past year, one of the most momentous in living memory.
In this special episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer catches up with Douglas Murray one year after the publication of his bestselling book The Madness of Crowds, now out in paperback, with an Afterword update on all that has happened the past year, one of the most momentous in living memory.
In Science Salon podcast # 136, Michael Shermer speaks with Gad Saad about his new book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

Shermer and Saad discuss: dangerous idea pathogens • ideological parasites • the origin of political correctness and how it was corrupted • identity politics and how it perpetrates bigotry, racism, and misogyny • the psychology of victimhood • virtue signaling and why it isn’t virtuous • why social justice is injustice • • the corruption of postmodernism • Islamophobia • diversity, inclusion and equity • safe spaces, microaggressions, trigger warnings • liberalism • the paradox of tolerance, and more…