The Michael Shermer Show

Why does being alive feel like something? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio argues that the answer begins with the body's need to stay alive. Hunger, thirst, pain, and pleasure tell us how we're doing and push us to act. These basic feelings, he says, are the foundation of consciousness. Damasio returns to the show to discuss his new book, Natural Intelligence and the Logic of Consciousness, why feelings and emotions are different, what your dog knows about you, and why he thinks Francis Crick looked in the wrong place for the origins of conscious experience. If consciousness depends on a living body, could a computer ever have it? And would uploading your brain actually preserve you? Damasio leaves room for a form of machine consciousness, though he argues it would be fundamentally different from ours. He also talks about what brain injuries reveal about the mind, how psychedelics change our perception, where human choice comes from, and why religion offers such powerful comfort. Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Considered one of the most eminent scientists of our time, he has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of brain processes and their relationship to emotions and consciousness. He has discussed his research in books such as Descartes' Error, The Sensation of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza, and The Strange Order of Things.

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 experiences that have kept him studying paranormal beliefs for decades—including his own childhood UFO sighting and a supposedly haunted vape shop. Markovsky explains how friends, communities, and our sense of who we are shape what we believe—and why changing someone's mind can take more than better evidence. Barry Markovsky is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University of South Carolina. His articles on ghosts, UFOs, and coincidences appear at TheConversation.com, which disseminates them to major news outlets worldwide. To date, more than a million readers have downloaded them. His new book is Everyday Extraordinary.

Would World War II have happened without Hitler? Would someone else have built Apple without Steve Jobs? Jared Diamond joins Michael Shermer to ask how much history depends on particular people. From Darwin's discoveries to the rise of Christianity, Diamond considers when someone is truly irreplaceable, when someone else would have done much the same thing, and how we can tell the difference. Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the seminal million-copy-bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was named one of Time magazine's best non-fiction books of all time, Collapse, a No. 1 international bestseller, and The World Until Yesterday, among other books. A professor of geography at UCLA and noted polymath, Diamond's work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology and history, among others. His new book is Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?

America's criminal justice debate usually gets reduced to two options: abolish the system or lock everyone up forever. Economist Jennifer Doleac thinks the data point somewhere else entirely. In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with Doleac about what rigorous research can tell us about crime, punishment, deterrence, prison reform, and public safety. Doleac argues that America has built much of its criminal justice system backwards: too little certainty of being caught, too much faith in long prison sentences, and not enough testing of what actually works. Jennifer Doleac is the Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy focused on evidence-based policy. Before that, she spent over a decade as an economics professor, conducting academic research. She is a leading expert on the economics of crime and discrimination, and a vocal proponent of using rigorous research to inform policy. She frequently writes for outlets including The Washington Post, TIME, and Bloomberg Opinion, and she hosts the Probable Causation podcast on law, economics, and crime. Doleac holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University. Her new book is The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.