The Michael Shermer Show Podcast

What began as a call for justice has, in many cases, become an engine of conformity. In this searching conversation, Andrew Doyle (author, satirist, and cultural critic) joins Michael Shermer to unpack the trajectory of the woke movement: from its roots in anti-bigotry and awareness to its current entanglement with censorship, identitarian dogma, and ideological rigidity.

Drawing on his new book, The End of Woke Doyle traces the intellectual history of contemporary activism, explores the authoritarian impulses emerging on both the left and the right, and makes the case for a return to classical liberalism as a defense against escalating cultural tribalism.

Together, Shermer and Doyle explore themes ranging from the legacy of Shakespeare and Milton, the tension between equality and meritocracy, and the broader sociopolitical dynamics shaping public discourse.

This episode offers a sharp, historically grounded analysis of one of the defining cultural shifts of our timeand a call to revive liberal principles in the face of rising ideological orthodoxy.

Andrew Doyle is a writer, satirist and political commentator. He was formerly a Visiting Research Fellow at Queens University Belfast, and a lecturer at Oxford University where he completed his doctorate in Renaissance Literature. He is the creator of satirical character Titania McGrath, under whose name he has written two books: Woke: A Guide to Social Justice and My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism, both published by Little, Brown. Titania McGrath has over half a million followers on X. His previous books include Free Speech and Why it Matters and The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World. His new book is The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has unleashed unimaginable growth in opportunity and prosperity. And yet, at key points in American history, economic disruption has led to a greater role for government, ostensibly to protect against capitalism’s excesses. Today, government regulates, mandates, subsidizes and controls a growing share of the American economy.

Today on the show, retired U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, one of America’s premier public policy advocates, and noted economist Donald J. Boudreaux look at the seven events and issues in American history that define, for most Americans, the role of government and how the 21st century world works. To many, these 5 periods of American history—the Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, decline of America’s postwar preeminence in world trade, and the Great Recession—along with the existing levels of income inequality and poverty, represent strong evidence for expanding government in American life. Gramm and Boudreaux argue that the evidence might point to a contrary verdict.

Phil Gramm served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives and eighteen years in the U.S. Senate where he was Chairman of the Banking Committee. Gramm is a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was Vice Chairman of UBS Investment Bank and is now Vice Chairman of Lone Star Funds. He taught Economics at Texas A&M University and has published numerous articles and books.

Donald J. Boudreaux is an American economist, author, professor, and co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Times, and many scholarly publications.

Their new book is The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism.

By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all?

Cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities: bouncing and cyclic universes, time loops, creations from nothing, multiverses, black hole births, string theories, and holograms.

Incorporating insights from Afshordi’s cutting-edge research and Halper’s original interviews with scientists like Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, and Alan Guth, Afshordi and Halper compare these models for the origin of our origins, showing each theory’s strengths and weaknesses and explaining new attempts to test these notions. But most of all, Afshordi and Halper show that this search is filled with wonder, discovery, and community—all essential for remembering a forgotten cosmic past.

Niayesh Afshordi is professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and associate faculty at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. His prize-winning research focuses on competing models for the early universe, dark energy, dark matter, black holes, holography, and gravitational waves.

Phil Halper is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a science popularizer. He is the creator of the popular YouTube series Before the Big Bang, which has had several million views. His astronomy images have been featured in major media outlets including The Washington Post, the BBC, and The Guardian, and he has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals.

In 2010, in a small New Hampshire town, next door to a copy center and framing shop, a ghost lab opened. The Kitt Research Initiative’s mission was to use the scientific method to document the existence of spirits. Founder Andy Kitt was known as a straight-shooter; he was unafraid—perhaps eager—to offend other paranormal investigators by exposing the fraudulence of their less advanced techniques. But when KRI started to lose money, Kitt began to seek funding from the paranormal community, attracting flocks of psychics, alien abductees, witches, mediums, ghost hunters, UFOlogists, cryptozoologists and warlocks from all over New England, and the world. And there were plenty of them around.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, author of the new book The Ghost Lab, explains the wild ecosystem of paranormal profiteers and consumers through the astonishing story of what happened in this one small town. He also maps the trends of declining scientific literacy, trust in institutions, and the diffusion of a culture that has created space for armies of pseudoscientists to step into the minds of an increasingly credulous public.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bearand It Sounds Like a Quack. His new book is The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts are Wrecking Science.

This is the inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.

Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly―experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.”

In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost―until now.

Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA’s victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice.

The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society.

John Lisle is a historian of science and the American intelligence community. He was on the show for his previous book, The Dirty Tricks Department, about Stanley Lovell, the OSS precursor to the CIA, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare. In Vol. 25, No. 2 of Skeptic he wrote about MKULTRA, the CIA program in search of mind control technology. His new book is Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA.