100. Episode Special: Ask Me Almost Anything

Can fighting racism end up reinforcing it? Shelby Steele grew up under segregation and became a Black militant in the 1960s. Today, he argues that White guilt has created a different racial problem: treating Black Americans as permanent victims who cannot succeed without White he ...  Show more

What do you make of an experience you can't explain? A strange light in the sky, a book flying off a desk, a coincidence that feels too improbable to be chance? Social psychologist Barry Markovsky joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book Everyday Extraordinary and the experi ...  Show more

In this special celebratory 100th episode, I discuss six major unsolved problems in science: the P vs NP problem in computer science, the mystery of dark matter in physics, the existence of the island of stability in chemistry, the historical occurrence of a snowball Earth scenar ...  Show more

Science doesn’t always get it right the first time—and that’s part of the journey. In this anniversary episode, we explore how ideas about nerve damage, sustainable materials and alien life have done a full 180. Recommended Reading Celebrating 180 Years of Scientific American 180 ...  Show more

What would a wormhole actually look like? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice break down a grab bag of questions about nothingness, the nature of miracles, the role of AI in scientific discovery and more!

NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode ...

What forces people to lose trust in science? How does this affect the process of science itself? What are scientists doing to make this worse? How can we fix it? In this special episode themed from my latest book, I discuss these questions and m ...