Author: Armen Shirvanian

Brian S. Lowery is an American social psychologist. Lowery obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1996, and subsequently began graduate study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned a master’s degree in 1998 and a doctorate in 2002.

Social psychologist and Stanford professor Brian Lowery presents a provocative, powerful theory of identity, arguing that there is no essential “self”—our selves are social creations of those with whom we interact —exploring what that means for who we can be and who we allow others to be.

There’s nothing we spend more time with, but understand less, than ourselves. You’ve been with yourself every waking moment of your life. But who—or, rather, what—are you? In Selfless, Brian Lowery argues for the radical idea that the “self” as we know it—that “voice in your head”—is a social construct, created in our relationships and social interactions. We are unique because our individual pattern of relationships is unique. We change because our relationships change. Your self isn’t just you, it’s all around you.

Lowery uses this research-driven perspective of selfhood to explore questions of inequity, race, gender, politics, and power structures, transforming our perceptions of how the world is and how it could be. His theory offers insight into how powerful people manage their environment in sophisticated, often unconscious, ways to maintain the status quo; explains our competing drives for deep social connection and personal freedom; and answers profound, personal questions such as: Why has my sense of self evolved over time? Why do I sometimes stop short of changes that I want to make in life?

In Selfless, Lowery persuasively breaks down common assumptions and beliefs; his insights are humbling. Despite what many may think, we aren’t islands unto ourselves; we are the creation of the many hands that touch us. We don’t just exist in communities, we are created and shaped by them. Our highs and lows are not only our own but belong to others as well. By recognizing that we are products of relationships—from fleeting transactions to deep associations—we shatter the myth of individualism and free ourselves to make our lives and the world accordingly. 

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On this Food For Thought Friday with Rebecca, we go into a few topics of importance in society, with Rebecca Faith Lawson coming to us from the University of South Florida for an impromptu discussion on many fronts. We discuss some statistics on the nuclear family, polarization of views, those who do expressing versus those who could bring a lot to expression, and more.

What is the value of the nuclear family, and why has it become less common in recent decades?

How has polarization affected the communication landscape, and is everyone being averaged into a person that doesn’t showcase any extremes?

Do the people who have a voice belong having a voice, and do others who don’t bring out their voice have lots to contribute?

I was glad to have Rebecca join on this Food For Thought Friday, and you can check out her past discussions on the show here (authenticity, belief, time horizons) and here (self-awareness, discernment, content creation).

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Sheena Iyengar is the S. T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Department at Columbia Business School and the best-selling author of The Art of Choosing (2010). She is a leading expert on the study of innovation, choice, leadership, and creativity and regularly consults with a range of organizations on methods for innovation. She joins on episode 386, where we discuss her upcoming book Think Bigger, which comes out April 11.

“In Think Bigger, Sheena Iyengar—an acclaimed author and expert in the science of choice—answers a timeless question with enormous implications for problems of all kinds across the world: “How can I get my best ideas?”

Iyengar provides essential tools to spark creative thinking and help us make our most meaningful choices. She draws from recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences to give readers a set of practical steps for coming up with powerful new ideas. Think Bigger offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas that Iyengar and her team of researchers developed and refined over the last decade.

For anyone looking to innovate, the black box of creativity is a mystery no longer. Think Bigger upends the myth that big ideas are reserved for a select few. By using this method as a guide to creative thinking, anybody can produce revolutionary ideas.”

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Dr. Susan Finkbeiner is a lecturer of Biology at California State University of Long Beach, as well as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Chicago. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Entomology from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, and joins me on episode 385 of the show, where we discuss much about butterflies, including types of mimicry, mating, dimorphism, scent, her Costa Rica study abroad efforts, convergent evolution, as well as some life messages, modeling, and Midwest qualities.

Her research involves a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary mechanisms underlying adaptive phenotypic variation across a rapidly diversifying lineage of butterflies, with the central goal of understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape temporal and spatial patterns of biodiversity.

Her previous research at UC-Irvine focused on how natural and sexual selection work together to favor the evolution of specific animal phenotypes, how aposematic signaling may drive the evolution of social behavior in the context of visual ecology, and how specialized visual systems coevolve with specialized visual cues.

Susan has worked with tropical Adelpha butterflies and temperate Limenitis butterflies. As well, her previous research has used neotropical Heliconius butterflies (known as the passion-vine butterflies) to examine how natural and sexual selection work together to favor the evolution of specific animal phenotypes, how warning signaling may drive the evolution of social behavior in the context of visual ecology, and how specialized visual systems co-evolve with specialized visual cues.

Her research and work is viewable at:

http://www.heliconius.org/author/susan-finkbeiner/ https://www.kronforstlab.org/index.html http://people.bu.edu/smullen/Mullen_Lab_at_Boston_University/Home.html http://visiongene.bio.uci.edu/Adriana_Briscoe/Briscoe_Lab.html
http://reedlab.org/

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Professor Gloria Mark of UC Irvine joins on episode 384 of the show, where we go into detail on her latest book Attention Span.

From Gloria’s bio, “My research area is human-computer interaction (HCI) studying the interplay of technology with individuals, groups, and society. I study how people interact with information technology in their everyday life: how it affects multitasking, attention, mood, and above all, stress. Rather than bring people into a laboratory to study them, I go to where people are–the real world becomes a living laboratory.  Using precise objective measures, I found that  people’s attention spans have been shrinking over the last 15 years.  I combine these measures with others to create a very detailed, comprehensive, and in-depth understanding of what people experience when they use computer technology.

“We spend an average of just 47 seconds on any screen before shifting our attention. It takes 25 minutes to bring our attention back to a task after an interruption. And we interrupt ourselves more than we’re interrupted by others.

In Attention Span, psychologist Gloria Mark reveals these and more surprising results from her decades of research into how technology affects our attention. She shows how much of what we think we know is wrong, including insights such as:

• Why multitasking hurts rather than helps productivity
• How social media and modern entertainment amplify our short attention spans
• What drains our mental resources and how to refuel them
• The four types of attention that we experience every day and how to recognize them

While the concept of “flow” has previously been considered the ideal state of focus, Dr. Mark offers a new framework to help explain how our brains function in the digital world: kinetic attention. This book reveals how we can take control, not only to find more success in our careers, but also to find health and wellness in our everyday lives.”

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Mikko Hermanni Hyppönen is a Finnish computer security expert, speaker and author. He is known for the Hyppönen Law about IoT security, which states that whenever an appliance is described as being “smart”, it is vulnerable. He joins us on episode 383, where we discuss malware, viruses, cyber warfare, and more from If It’s Smart, It’s Vulnerable. It was great speaking with Mikko on these topics.

“All our devices and gadgets―from our refrigerators to our home security systems, vacuum cleaners, and stereos―are going online, just like our computers did. But once we’ve successfully connected our devices to the internet, do we have any hope of keeping them, and ourselves, safe from the dangers that lurk beneath the digital waters?

In If It’s Smart, It’s Vulnerable, veteran cybersecurity professional Mikko Hypponen delivers an eye-opening exploration of the best―and worst―things the internet has given us. From instant connectivity between any two points on the globe to organized ransomware gangs, the net truly has been a mixed blessing. In this book, the author explores the transformative potential of the future of the internet, as well as those things that threaten its continued existence: government surveillance, censorship, organized crime, and more.

Readers will also find:

• Insightful discussions of how law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate on the internet
• Fulsome treatments of how money became data and the impact of the widespread use of mobile supercomputing technology
• Explorations of how the internet has changed the world, for better and for worse
• Engaging stories from Mikko’s 30-year career in infosec

Perfect for anyone seeking a thought-provoking presentation of some of the most pressing issues in cybersecurity and technology, If It’s Smart, It’s Vulnerable will also earn a place in the libraries of anyone interested in the future of the internet.”

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Our guest on episode 382 of the show is Professor Erik Angner of Stockholm University, who joins me to discuss his book How Economics Can Save The World. “Economics has the power to make the world a better, happier and safer place: this book shows you how Our world is in a mess. The challenges of climate change, inequality, hunger and a global pandemic mean our way of life seems more imperilled and society more divided than ever; but economics can help! From parenting to organ donation, housing to anti-social behaviour, economics provides the tools we need to fix the biggest issues of today.

Far from being a means to predict the stock market, enrich the elite or track money around the globe, economics provides a lens through which we can better understand how things work, design clever solutions and create the conditions in which we can all flourish. With a healthy dose of optimism, and packed with stories of economics in everyday situations, Erik Angner demonstrates the methods he and his fellow economists use to help improve our lives and the society in which we live. He shows us that economics can be a powerful force for good, awakening the possibility of a happier, more just and more sustainable world.”

“Erik Angner is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, where he directs the PPE Program. As a result of serious mission creep, he holds two PhDs – one in Economics and one in History and Philosophy of Science – both from the University of Pittsburgh.

He is the author of two other books, Hayek and Natural Law (2007) and A Course in Behavioral Economics (3rd Ed., 2020), as well as multiple journal articles and book chapters on behavioral and experimental economics; the science and philosophy of happiness; and the history, philosophy, and methodology of contemporary economics.”

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Welcome to episode 381 of the show, with my guest and host of Social Animal, Ruben. Ruben helps people connect with the people around them, and, as we get into in the episode, helps individuals not censor themselves and the things that speak to them.

On Social Animal, Ruben goes out with individuals for a day (or more) to guide them and give feedback on what they are doing, such that they can express themselves to others when they feel up to it. I like the detail he gives to people, and how he motivates or supports them to try again or figure something out.

You can check out his material at Social Animal on YouTube.

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Professor Chiara Russo Krauss is a researcher at University of Naples Federico II, Department of Humanities, who serves as Associate Professor in History of Philosophy, and who is interested in introspection and introspectionism, history of psychology, 19th and 20th century philosophy. She joins on episode 380, where we discuss and preview some material from upcoming book The Philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt, out February 9th.

“This volume is the first English resource to shed light on the philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt (1862-1929), the main pupil of Ernst Mach and founder of the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, later the association of Berlin logical positivists. A central figure in the early debate on the theory of relativity, his work was praised by Einstein himself.

Tracing the development of Petzoldt’s ideas, starting from his early acceptance of materialism and Kantian agnosticism, Chiara Russo Krauss presents a comprehensive reconstruction of his philosophy in the context of the German milieu. She examines his attempt to develop a new philosophy following Gustav Fechner and the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach. In the final chapter, she sets out how Petzoldt proposed relativistic positivism as the official interpretation of Einstein’s relativity.

By illuminating key elements of Petzoldt’s work, this is a valuable case study for students and scholars of philosophy of science and late 19th-century and early 20th-century philosophy. It reveals the complex interplay of two different tendencies of the time: neo-Kantianism and its struggle to overcome the notion of thing-in-itself, as well as the need for an epistemological foundation for the new advances of science.”

You can find Professor Krauss on Twitter at @russokrauss, with her publications shown on ResearchGate, and The Philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt will be available by Bloomsbury publishing at https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/philosophy-of-joseph-petzoldt-9781350321458/

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In this wide-ranging, deeply researched account, Murray Pittock examines the place of Scotland in the world. Pittock explores Scotland and Empire, the rise of nationalism, and the pressures on the country from an increasingly monolithic understanding of “Britishness.” From the Thirty Years’ War to Jacobite risings and today’s ongoing independence debates, Scotland and its diaspora have undergone profound changes. This ground-breaking account reveals the diversity of Scotland’s history and shows how, after the country disappeared from the map as an independent state, it continued to build a global brand.

Professor Murray Pittock (MA D.Litt. Glasgow; D.Phil Oxford) is Bradley Professor and Pro Vice-Principal. He has worked at the universities of Manchester (where he was the first professor of Scottish literature at an English university), Edinburgh, Oxford, Aberdeen and Strathclyde, and has held visiting appointments at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (2002), New York University (Visiting Professor of English, 2015); Charles University, Prague (Ministry of Education Visiting Professor in Languages, 2010), Trinity College, Dublin (Visiting Professor in English and History, 2008), Auburn (History and Equality and Diversity, 2006), Notre Dame (NEH seminar visiting scholar in Irish Studies, 2014), USC (Roy Lecturer in Scottish Studies, 2015) and Yale (Senior Warnock Fellow, 1998 and 2000-1).

Murray is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the English Association, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland among other bodies, and an honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. Murray’s books are set on courses in English, History, Irish Studies, theology and politics in around twenty-five countries, and he has been awarded or shortlisted/nominated for a number of literary and historical prizes and prize lectureships. He is one of the few UK academics to be a prize lecturer of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the British Academy, and has acted as an external assessor for chairs and grants from the Ivy League to the Middle East.

Murray is Scottish History Adviser to the National Trust for Scotland, has acted as adviser to the National Galleries and has held grants in English, History, Museology, Tourism and the creative economy. In 2014, he became the founding convenor of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, and remains chair of its Trustees.

Murray has appeared in the UK and overseas media in over 50 countries on some 1500 occasions to comment on history, literature and current affairs, including scripting and presenting radio series ( The Roots of Scottish Nationalism -Radio 4, 6.25M aggregate audience, 81% UK wide approval rating) and has co-curated a number of exhibitions. He regularly acts as a consultant to national institutions. Murray supervises PhDs in the areas of Burns, Cultural History, Irish Studies, Jacobitism, Romanticism, Scott, Scottish Studies and other fields.

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Joining us on episode 378 is Dr. Temple Grandin, author of Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. Dr. Grandin is a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Facilities she has designed are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used worldwide and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many people to reduce stress on their animals during handling.

She has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare. Other areas of research are: cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, horse perception of novel objects, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants.

She obtained her B.A. at Franklin Pierce College and her M.S. in Animal Science at Arizona State University. Dr. Grandin received her Ph.D in Animal Science from the University of Illinois in 1989. Today she teaches courses on livestock behaviour and facility design at Colorado State University and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare. She has appeared on television shows such as 20/20, 48 Hours, CNN Larry King Live, PrimeTime Live, 60 Minutes, the Today Show, and many shows in other countries.

In 2010, Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people. Interviews with Dr. Grandin have been broadcast on National Public Radio and she has a 2010 TED Lecture titled “The World Needs ALL Kinds of Minds.” She has also authored over 400 articles in both scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare, and facility design. She is the author of “Thinking in Pictures”, “Livestock Handling and Transport,” “Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals,” “Guide to Working with Farm Animals,” and “Humane Livestock Handling.” Her books “Animals in Translation” and “Animals Make Us Human” were both on the New York Times best seller list. “Animals Make Us Human” was also on the Canadian best seller list. Her latest book, Calling All Minds, was a New York Times best seller for middle school students.

Her life story has also been made into an HBO movie titled “Temple Grandin, staring Claire Danes,” which won seven Emmy awards and a Golden Globe. The movie shows her life as a teenager and how she started her career. In 2017, she was inducted into The Women’s Hall of Fame and in 2018 made a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was named as one of the top 10 Best College Professors in 202 by CEO Magazine.

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Our guest on episode 377 of the show is John Coogan, technologist, YouTuber, and co-founder of Soylent and Lucy. He has been an entrepreneur for a decade across multiple companies, and has brought forward marketing, ecommerce strategy, engineering, and finance to where he worked.

Aside from his company work, he has become a great storyteller on his YouTube channel of over 240000 subscribers, where he showcases stories or happenings in the technology space, discussing companies or leading figures at those companies, as well as the direction of upcoming technologies like artificial intelligence.

On this episode, we discussing his founding efforts, what makes for value in companies, and how to bring a compelling story through content creation that informs and entertains.

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Rama Chellappa, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering and chief scientist at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, is a pioneer in the area of artificial intelligence. His work in computer vision, pattern recognition, and machine learning have had a profound impact on areas including biometrics, smart cars, forensics, and 2D and 3D modeling of faces, objects, and terrain. His work in motion capturing and imaging shows promise for future use in health care and medicine.

He joined Johns Hopkins after 29 years at the University of Maryland, where he served lengthy stretches as chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Center for Automation Research. He is a member of Johns Hopkins’ Mathematical Institute for Data Science and the Center for Imaging Science.

Chellappa’s research has shaped the field of facial recognition technology—developing detailed face models based on shape, appearance, texture, and bone and muscle structure. Under a recent program called Janus, he and his team have developed a high-accuracy face recognition system that serves critical needs for federal and commercial sectors. The team has also worked on modeling facial expressions, with potential for a variety of medical applications.

He also is known as an expert in machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that instructs computer systems to perform tasks based on patterns and inferences. In one recent experiment, Chellappa and colleagues tested the skills of expert forensic facial examiners against the skills of machines; as it turned out, the best results came when both sides worked together. This research has implications for how machine learning algorithms can help doctors diagnose disease.

Chellappa has also worked on gait analysis, which can apply to an enormous range of uses—everything from diagnosing Parkinson’s disease to human identification at a distance.

He was born and raised in South India, near Chennai, and studied at the University of Madras and the Indian Institute of Science before attending Purdue University in Indiana, which was then building an international reputation for a branch of machine learning known as statistical pattern recognition.

Chellapa’s book, Can We Trust AI ?, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2022. Chellappa is the 2020 recipient of the Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal for his contributions to image and video processing, particularly face recognition. This is one of the top honors from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), where Chellappa is a life fellow and previously served as editor-in-chief of journals. Among many other honors, Chellappa has also won technical achievement awards from the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Signal Processing Society; the latter also awarded him with its highest honor, the Society Award.

He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering there, studying under mentors including Keinosuke Fukunaga, R.L. Kayshyap, and King Sun-Fu. (Some three decades later, Chellappa won the esteemed award named for Sun-Fu, from the International Association of Pattern Recognition.) His interest in biomedical engineering dates back to these years when he designed a cardiac pacemaker as his capstone project.

During his doctoral studies, he also conducted research at the University of Maryland (UMD) with Azriel Rosenfeld, one of the founding fathers of computer vision. The mentorship launched his career in this field, which trains computers to identify, classify, and understand digital images. Chellappa later joined UMD as a professor in 1991, after 10 years at the University of Southern California.

Use code HAI30 for 30% off Can We Trust AI? when you order from Hopkins Press. Order here: https://bit.ly/3tSZ6K6

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Dr. Barbaro holds a Ph.D. in psychology with a specialization in evolution and human development from Oakland University. She is currently an Educational Research Scientist for WGU Labs, an Adjunct Professor at Utah Valley University, and the Communications Officer for the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.

Outside of her formal work, she spends the majority of her time reading non-fiction books, writing about science and higher education, and exploring our wondrous planet.

She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with her husband where she spends her weekends running, hiking, and skiing in the Wasatch mountains, camping in our nation’s beautiful national parks, and discovering the desert’s secrets.

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Jana Gallus is an assistant professor in the strategy group at UCLA Anderson. Her research interests lie in behavioral economics, strategy, and innovation, with a focus on recognition incentives and their effects on decision-making. She investigates how incentive schemes can be designed to enhance employee motivation and organizational performance in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

Gallus’ work has been published in Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Applied Economics, Labour Economics, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, among other journals. Her research is informed by consulting activities for organizations on the design of incentives and recognition schemes.

Gallus joined UCLA from Harvard, where she was a postdoctoral fellow. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Zurich, with the distinction summa cum laude, and holds two master’s degrees, from Sciences Po Paris in France and the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

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Joining us on episode 372 is Dr. Marion Labouré, author of Democratizing Finance: The Radical Promise of Fintech. She is Senior Economist at Deutsche Bank in London and an associate of the department of economics at Harvard University.

Regarding what “Democratizing Finance” covers, “We are only in the early stages of a broader revolution that will impact every aspect of the global economy, including commerce and government services. Coming financial technology innovations could improve the quality of life for all people.

Over the past few decades, digital technology has transformed finance. Financial technology (fintech) has enabled more people with fewer resources, in more places around the world, to take advantage of banking, insurance, credit, investment, and other financial services. Marion Laboure and Nicolas Deffrennes argue that these changes are only the tip of the iceberg. A much broader revolution is under way that, if steered correctly, will lead to huge and beneficial social change.”

She has extensive private sector, public policy, and monetary policy experience, including at the European Commission, the IMF, the Luxembourg Central Bank, and Barclays. Her research is focused on public finance, monetary economics and financial technology.

She received first prize from the American Society of Actuaries, Revue Banque nominated her as a rising star in finance, she is part of the 45 standout women in fintech, and Business Insider named her a cryptocurrency mastermind.

Marion holds a PhD in Economics from the Ecole Normale Superieure, and a Master’s degree in Economics from the London School of Economics, as well as a Master in Finance from the University of Paris Dauphine.

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Professor Andrew Shtulman is a cognitive developmental psychologist who studies conceptual development and conceptual change, particularly as they relate to science education. He is a Professor of Cognitive Science and Psychology at Occidental College, and chair of its Psychology department.

His research explores both the acquisition of domain-specific concepts and the development of domain-general inference strategies. His work has appeared in such journals as Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Child Development, Journal of Educational Psychology, Psychological Science, and Psychological Review, and he is the recipient of an Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation and an Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Dr. Shtulman is also the author of Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong (Basic Books, 2017).

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Welcome to episode 370 with Dr. Michael Shermer, author of “Conspiracy”, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine.

“This book is a must read for understanding conspiracy theories, who believes them and why, and how to counter them. When author Michael Shermer saw the video of a middle-aged man named Kevin Seefried walking across the rotunda in the Capitol Building dome on January 6, 2021, proudly waving a large Confederate flag representing bigotry and hate, he could not help but wonder, “What went wrong with this man’s beliefs?”

With the legacy of January 6^th and the conspiracy theory of a stolen election still plaguing the country (two-thirds of Republicans believe President Biden is illegitimate), the problem of today’s conspiracism is more pressing than at any time in our history. In Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, best-selling author Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, presents his own original theory to explain why people believe conspiracy theories, and in an engrossing analysis shows how we can determine which conspiracy theories are likely true or false, and how we can break their power.

Conspiracism has been part of the fabric of society for centuries; we evolved to detect external threats of dangerous coalitions. Many conspiracies are real. For instance, the most consequential conspiracy of the 20^th century was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, resulting in a war costing tens of millions their lives. And conspiracies often grow up around a shared traumatizing event, like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the death of Princess Diana, or the events of 9/11. But the conspiracy theories that have gained popularity of late are markedly different from those in the past, in that they require little to no proof for their adherents. Mere assertion of a conspiracy claim suffices—“fake news” or “rigged” or “people are saying” is all the evidence many people need to be convinced of their veracity.

Historically, popular American conspiracy theories tended to reside on the fringes of society, but today conspiratorial thinking has gone mainstream. Shermer cites Skeptics Society polling research showing that, for example, a remarkable one in five Americans believe that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the United States are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation” (QAnon), and one in four believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” by the Bush administration.

While the impulse to see conspiracies might be a natural human trait, it is not necessarily healthy, especially not for a diverse society and a liberal democracy that depends on institutional trust. How might we combat the rise in belief in conspiracies? One answer is education. Shermer notes that 42% of people without a high school diploma score highly in having conspiratorial predispositions, compared with those holding postgraduate degrees, who come in at 22%. Another is transparency: the checks and balances in the institutions that make up a liberal democracy must be immune to conspiracies.

In Conspiracy, Michael Shermer provides an urgently needed model to explain who believes in conspiracy theories, why, and how to debunk them when they are false. As former president Barack Obama wrote in 2020, “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.””

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He writes a weekly Substack column. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, and Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist.

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Jacob Soll is professor of history and accounting at the University of Southern California. He received a B.A. from the University of Iowa, a D.E.A. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and a Ph.D. from Magdalene College, Cambridge University. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including two NEH Fellowships, the Jacques Barzun Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the MacArthur Fellowship.

Soll’s first book, Publishing “The Prince” (2005), examines how Machiavelli’s work was popularized and influenced modern political thought.  It won the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society.  In his second book, The Information Master (2009), Soll investigates how Louis XIV’s famous finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert fused financial management and library sciences to create one of the first modern information states. 

His most recent book, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (2014), presents a sweeping history of accounting and politics, drawing on a wealth of examples from over a millennia of human history to reveal how accounting can used to both build kingdoms, empires and entire civilizations, but also to undermine them.  It explains the origins of our own financial crisis as deeply rooted in a long disconnect between human beings and their attempts to manage financial numbers.  The Reckoning, reviewed in major newspapers and publications around the world, has sold more than 60,000 copies worldwide, and has been translated into five languages.

His new books include Free Market: The History of a Dream (Basic Books), an analysis of classical philosophy, natural law, history and contemporary economic culture; a history of libraries and Enlightenment (Yale University Press); and the first English edition of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s economic writings (Anthem).

Soll has been a correspondent for the Boston Globe, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Politico, the New Republic, PBS, Salon.com and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Soll is currently meeting with political and financial leaders across the globe to promote accounting standards and financial transparency.

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