What if the deepest human drive isn’t happiness, survival, or even love, but the need to matter?

Philosopher and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein joins Michael Shermer to discuss The Mattering Instinct, her argument that the desire to feel significant lies at the core of human behavior. That drive helps explain our greatest achievements, from creativity and moral courage to scientific and artistic excellence. It also helps explain some of our darkest outcomes, including extremism, violence, and ideological fanaticism.

Goldstein examines why people will give up comfort, status, and sometimes even their own lives to feel that they matter. She questions why meaning cannot be captured by happiness metrics or self-help formulas, and why the same psychological force can produce saints, scientists, athletes, cult leaders, and terrorists. The conversation moves through free will, entropy, morality without God, fame, narcissism, and the crucial difference between ways of mattering that create order and those that leave damage behind.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She is the author of ten books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction, including 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. She holds a PhD in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her work has been supported by the MacArthur “Genius” grant and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting Institute, Radcliffe Institute, and the National Science Foundation. Her new book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us.

In this unscripted solo episode, Michael Shermer reflects on a dizzying start to the year and what it reveals about truth, power, and public judgment. From events in Venezuela and the limits of exporting democracy to a viral Planet Fitness controversy, the Minneapolis ICE shooting, and renewed claims about aliens, Shermer keeps returning to the same question: What actually helps, and what only feels like a good idea in the moment?

What if the way we approach mental health is quietly making things worse?

Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sami Timimi joins Michael Shermer to examine some of the core assumptions behind modern psychiatry. Why have diagnoses such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression expanded so dramatically—and why hasn’t increased access to treatment led to better outcomes at the population level?

Timimi describes how diagnostic categories have broadened over time and questions whether psychiatric labels function in the same way as medical diagnoses elsewhere in healthcare. Without clear biological markers, he argues, definitions can expand to include forms of distress that were once considered part of ordinary human experience.

The conversation also considers the role of meaning, identity, and culture in shaping how people understand psychological suffering. Timimi reflects on the limits of medication and therapy, the unintended consequences of the “mental illness as physical illness” model, and how social media may contribute to the spread and reinforcement of certain diagnostic categories.

Dr. Sami Timimi is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has published more than 150 academic papers and authored or edited over a dozen books, including Naughty Boys, Liberatory Psychiatry, and The Myth of Autism. His new book is Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Mental Health, Distress, and Neurodiversity.

What is consciousness, really? Why does it not simply switch on at a single moment? Neuroscientist Niko Kukushkin explains how even single cells can show primitive forms of memory and agency, why the human mind is not a mysterious force floating above biology, and why reducing it to “just neurons” misses what actually matters.

He also discusses the evolutionary gamble of complexity, why bacteria still dominate the planet, and how abstraction and memory together give rise to thought.

At the center of the conversation is an unsettling question: Why does it feel so special to be you when science says that you are nothing but a chemical reaction—a collection of atoms and molecules, like rocks, paperclips, and everything else in the physical universe?

Nikolay Kukushkin is a clinical associate professor at New York University and a research fellow at NYU’s Center for Neural Science, where he studies how temporal patterns shape memory formation. He holds degrees from St. Petersburg State University and Oxford University, and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of a recent paper in Nature Communications demonstrating canonical memory in non-neural cells. His book is One Hand Clapping.

Francis Crick is best known as one of the figures behind the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but the familiar story leaves out as much as it explains. Historian of science Matthew Cobb looks closely at how Crick’s life actually unfolded, revealing a career shaped less by inevitability than by luck, conflict, false starts, and a series of highly contingent moments.

The double helix itself may have been waiting to be found, but what followed was anything but predetermined. Crick’s influence came from asking uncomfortable questions about what the structure of DNA implied for genetics, evolution, and life itself. Along the way, myths hardened around personalities, credit, and rivalries, especially in the case of Rosalind Franklin, whose role has been both misunderstood and oversimplified.

The conversation also traces Crick’s later turn away from molecular biology toward the problem that fascinated him from the beginning: consciousness. From visual perception to the search for neural correlates of experience, his ambition was to push back against mystical explanations and insist that even the most elusive aspects of the mind belonged to the material world.

Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of numerous works of science and history. His new book is Crick: A Mind in Motion, a biography of the legendary scientist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

What do you do when someone believes you shouldn’t exist?

Daryl Davis didn’t protest. He didn’t shout. He sat down, asked questions, and kept showing up. Over decades, that approach has led more than 200 Ku Klux Klan members and white supremacists to walk away from their robes for good.

In this conversation, Davis explains why people radicalize, and what happens psychologically when prejudice collides with a real human being. He shares stories from inside Klan meetings, lessons learned from neo-Nazis, and why today’s climate of polarization may actually be an opportunity rather than a dead end.

Daryl Davis earned his Bachelor of Music degree from Howard University and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Post University. He is the author of Klan-Destine Relationships and the subject of the multi-award-winning documentary Accidental Courtesy, which chronicles his work in race reconciliation. A lifelong musician, he has performed with Chuck Berry and President Bill Clinton, and as an actor appeared in HBO’s The Wire.

Open inquiry depends on the ability to ask uncomfortable questions and follow evidence wherever it leads. Eric Kaufmann argues that this norm is now under strain.

Drawing on history, survey data, and political theory, Kaufmann outlines how certain identity categories came to be treated as morally sacred—and how that shift has reshaped debates about equality, free speech, and academic inquiry. The conversation examines the long roots of today’s culture conflicts, the move from equal opportunity to equal outcomes, and why disagreement is increasingly interpreted as moral transgression rather than intellectual difference.

At stake is what happens to liberal societies when some questions can no longer be asked, nd whether open inquiry can still be defended without abandoning concern for fairness and dignity

Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham. He has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, Newsweek, National Review, New Statesman, Financial Times, and other outlets. His new book is The Third Awokening.

Brain-computer interfaces are moving out of the lab and into real medical use.

In this episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael Shermer talks with Dr. Matt Angle, founder and CEO of Paradromics, a neurotechnology company developing one of the most advanced high-data-rate brain implants in the world, similar to Neuralink. These devices record activity from individual neurons, making it possible to restore speech in people with paralysis, reconnect the brain to external devices, and potentially treat chronic pain and neurological disorders with far greater precision than existing approaches.

Angle explains why progress in neuroscience has been limited not by biology, but by data—how much information we can actually read from the brain, and how fast. He describes how patients who can no longer speak may soon communicate fluently using only brain signals, why invasive implants can sometimes be safer than long-term drug treatments, and what it takes to bring a brain implant through FDA approval and into the clinic.

The conversation also touches on the larger questions raised by this technology, including autonomy, consciousness, and what happens when the boundary between brain and machine begins to blur.

Matt Angle is the Founder and CEO of Paradromics, a neurotechnology leader developing the world’s most advanced and clinically viable brain-computer interface (BCI) platform—bridging human thought and digital capability. Paradromics’ BCI platform records brain activity with unmatched precision, capturing data at the level of individual neurons. This advanced technology enables the decoding of vast amounts of brain data, opening the door to next-generation treatments for paralysis, chronic pain, addiction, mental health conditions, and more. With the power of AI, this platform has the potential to radically shift how healthcare providers approach some of the most challenging medical conditions.

Angle earned his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Heidelberg, followed by postdoctoral research at Stanford University. Paradromics engineered its first clinical product, the Connexus® BCI, received two FDA Breakthrough Device Designations, and performed the first-in-human neural recording in May 2025. The company is now preparing to launch a clinical trial in early 2026, pending regulatory approval.