Michael Shermer

The Michael Shermer Show

Science EN ↓ 630 episodes

The Michael Shermer Show is a series of long-form conversations between Dr. Michael Shermer and leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.

Author

Michael Shermer

Episodes

5. Dr. Janna Levin — Gravitational Waves, Black Holes and the Nature of the Cosmos 10.04.2016 1:03:02

On Thursday, February 11, 2016, the National Science Foundation made a thrilling announcement: gravitational waves—first predicted by Einstein as part of his general theory of relativity in 1916—had been detected for the first time. This incredible development made front page news and was reported by outlets across the country. How was such a remarkable discovery, a long hundred years after Einste...

4. Dr. Sean B. Carroll — The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters 20.03.2016 1:35:29

How does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules , award-winning biologist and author Sean Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simple yet profoundly important quest...

3. Dr. Arthur Benjamin — The Magic of Math: Solving for x and Figuring Out Why 24.01.2016 1:33:26

The Magic of Math is the math book you wish you had in school. Using a delightful assortment of examples—from ice cream scoops and poker hands to measuring mountains and making magic squares—this book empowers you to see the beauty, simplicity, and truly magical properties behind those formulas and equations that once left your head spinning. You'll learn the key ideas of classic areas of mathemat...

2. Michelle Feynman — The Quotable Feynman & His Van 20.12.2015 1:16:09

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman (1918–88) was a towering scientific genius who could make himself understood by anyone and who became as famous for the wit and wisdom of his popular lectures and writings as for his fundamental contributions to science. The Quotable Feynman is a treasure-trove of this revered and beloved scientist's most profound, provocative, humorous, and memorab...

1. Dr. Lisa Randall — Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe 22.11.2015 1:11:56

The renowned Harvard cosmologist and theoretical physicist explores a scenario in which a disk of dark matter—the elusive stuff in the universe that interacts through gravity like ordinary matter, but that doesn't emit or absorb light—dislodged a comet from the Oort cloud that was ultimately responsible for the dinosaurs' extinction. Dr. Lisa Randall teaches us an enormous amount about dark matter...