Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Darwin’s Strangest Idea (Matt Ridley)
Release Date: 03/25/2025
How One Black Man Dismantled the KKK, One Conversation at a Time
The Michael Shermer Show
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...
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The Collapse of Open Inquiry: Sacred Victims and Forbidden Questions
The Michael Shermer Show
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...
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The Future of Brain Implants: Restoring Speech, Regaining Mobility, Treating Pain
The Michael Shermer Show
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....
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The Original Alien Craze: When People Believed in Martians
The Michael Shermer Show
At the turn of the 20th century, millions of Americans, including elite scientists, major newspapers, and cultural icons, were convinced that Mars was home to an advanced civilization. In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with award-winning science journalist David Baron about one of the most astonishing episodes in scientific-cultural history. Blurry telescopes, mistranslated words, and persuasive personalities transformed speculation into accepted fact, while more cautious scientists struggled to be heard. The discussion covers Percival Lowell’s Martian canals, Nikola Tesla’s claim to...
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How AI Sees Science Differently Than We Do
The Michael Shermer Show
What if the great discoveries of science came in the “wrong” order? The Laws of Thermodynamics were discovered well after the creation of algebra, classical physics, and chemistry, but are perhaps much more important to our basic understanding of the universe. Chris Edwards argues that AI will be able to understand science outside of the traditional chronological developments of the sciences, unlocking entirely new potentials and perspectives on the universe. If human scholars are to understand how AI interprets the universe, we will first need to understand the scientific narrative in a...
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Can You Spot a Killer? The Dangerous Fantasy of Criminal Profiling
The Michael Shermer Show
Criminal profiling promises certainty in the face of horror: this is what a killer looks like, this is how they think, this is how we stop them. But what if that promise is mostly an illusion? In this episode, Michael Shermer is joined by journalist and author Rachel Corbett to dismantle the myths behind criminal profiling, from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit to our obsession with serial killers, mindhunters, and “psychological fingerprints.” Corbett explains why randomness is harder to accept than evil, and how our hunger for neat explanations can actually make us less safe. Plus,...
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Why Wars Last Longer Than Experts Predict
The Michael Shermer Show
For nearly two centuries, international relations have been premised on the idea of the “Great Powers.” As the thinking went, these mighty states—the European empires of the nineteenth century, the United States and the USSR during the Cold War—were uniquely able to exert their influence on the world stage because of their overwhelming military capabilities. But this conception of power fails to capture the more complicated truth about how wars are fought and won. Our focus on the importance of large, well-equipped armies and conclusive battles has obscured the foundational...
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The Emergent Mind: From Ant Colonies to Human Thought to Artificial Intelligence
The Michael Shermer Show
In this episode of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael sits down with two giants of mind and machine science: Jay McClelland, one of the founders of modern neural networks, and Gaurav Suri, computational neuroscientist and director of the RAD Lab. Drawing from decades of research, they walk us through the revolution from behaviorism to cognitive psychology to modern neuroscience, and why simple interacting units can give rise to astonishingly complex behaviors. From why we perceive letters differently in context to how memory works, why consciousness remains baffling, and what AI is (and...
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Are We Meant to Leave Earth? Why Humanity May Have No Choice but to Go to Space
The Michael Shermer Show
Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about the past, present, and future of our relationship with space. Drawing on his new book The Giant Leap, Scharf explains why human expansion beyond Earth may be less a choice than an evolutionary development, and he walks through the physics, history, and personalities that shaped our journey off the planet. Scharf also explains the biological toll of radiation and microgravity, and why terraforming Mars is probably unrealistic and why our future might rely more on building vast rotating habitats in space than...
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Cosmology, Creation, and the Evidence for God
The Michael Shermer Show
In this episode, Michel-Yves Bolloré lays out his case for why modern cosmology, fine-tuning, and the limits of materialism point toward a creator. Drawing on physics, thermodynamics, probability, and philosophy, he argues that the Big Bang, the apparent beginning of the universe, and the complexity of life collectively form a compelling body of evidence for God’s existence. Bolloré explains why he believes the universe is not eternal, why “nothing” cannot produce “something,” how moral red lines suggest a transcendent source, and how he reconciles scientific reasoning with his...
info_outlineIn all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst, and violence.
Matt Ridley revisits Darwin’s revelatory theory of mate choice through the close study of the peculiar rituals of birds, and considers how this mating process complicates our own view of human evolution.
Ridley also explores the scientific research into the evolution of bright colors, exotic ornaments, and elaborate displays in birds around the world. Charles Darwin thought the purpose of such displays was to “charm” females. Though Darwin’s theory was initially dismissed and buried for decades, recent scientific research has proven him newly right—there is a powerful evolutionary force quite distinct from natural selection: mate choice. In Birds, Sex and Beauty, Ridley reopens the history of Darwin’s vexed theory, laying bare a century of disagreement about an idea so powerful, so weird, and so wonderful, we may have yet to fully understand its implications.
Matt Ridley is the bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 (with Alina Chan). His books have sold over a million copies. Ridley served in the House of Lords from 2013 to 2021 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest book is Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin’s Strangest Idea.