Take one look at his picture and I don’t know if I need to say more. Michael Shermer is a professional debunker and he looks absolutely stunning doing his work. He says that he doesn’t think he’s sexy, but we at the SGA strongly disagree.
Along with his amazing looks, Shermer has one heck of a sexy brain. He’s the author of several books, has appeared on Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, talked at TED, has biked across the US five times and that’s just the short list! We hope you’ll enjoy his SGA interview as much as we did.
You recently went on a tour for your latest book “The Mind of the Market”. What was that like? Highlights and cool stories?
The 9/11 “truthers” put out an all-points bulletin to show up at every one of my book events and ask questions and make statements about how 9/11 was an “inside job” by the Bush administration. My response to them was this: “Do you know how we know that the Bush administration did not orchestrate 9/11? Because it worked!”
What is your newest book about?
The Mind of the Market is about why people believe weird things about money and markets, and thus follows from what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years as a professional skeptic. There’s no reason to believe that people, who are so irrational in all other areas of life, would suddenly become rational when they go to Wall Street or Wal-Mart.
You describe skepticism as an approach and don’t self-identify as “a skeptic”. You use a similar distinction for science. Can you explain the distinction?
Science and skepticism is something you do, not something to be.
What do you geek out on?
Brain scans, evolution, the expanding cosmos, black holes, the beginning of time, the mind, the brain (oh, wait, those last two are the same), consciousness (okay, throw that into the previous two as well), what happens when we die, and the newest cycling technology for my bike.
You’ve made a profession out of a favorite geek pastime: asking questions and thinking about the answers. How’d you pull that off?
Beats me. I just do my thing. I guess its one of those Joseph Campbell deals where you “follow your bliss and the money will follow”.
Much of science fiction is based on things which aren’t in existence now, but which are theoretically possible. Do you think there’s any contradiction in being a skeptic who likes Battlestar Galactica or the X-Men?
A science fiction author once explained to me that the further into the future that a story is set the more willing we are to suspend disbelief. Thus, skeptics were pretty hard on X-Files because it was set in the present, but we love Star Trek, because it is set centuries hence. I suppose it is because such powers might be possible, given enough time.
You’re called in frequently to debate creationists. It seems like such a Sisyphean battle. Why is it important for you and other scientists to divert time away from other work and expend spend so much energy on that?
I do it so that professional working scientists don’t have to bother with the creationists, and instead can keep on doing real science.
We started SGA in great part to bring attention to people who are often overlooked or dismissed. You were doing the same things when you wrote about Darwin’s partner, Alfred Russel Wallace in “Darwin’s Shadow.” Do you want to highlight anything about him to our readers?
Wallace was one sexy geek, that’s for sure, and July 1, 2008 marks the 150th anniversary of the announcement at the Linnean Society of London the discovery of natural selection, one of the half dozen most important discoveries in the history of science, and Wallace got equal credit with Darwin for that, so he’s an Important Sexy Geek (ISG).
What was it like being at TED among all those big thinkers? Did it spark new ideas for you?
It was more than a little intimidating to be there, but once I started talking my brain sort of forgot that they were out there in the audience and I just went on autopilot and did my thing. But afterwards was pretty incredible talking to such interesting people. Rick Warren turned out to be the world’s nicest guy, and Al Gore turned out to be the world’s funniest guy, so you never know what is going to happen at a place like that
What technology do you use often? What tech do you depend on? (button holes count ;-))
iPhone, the greatest invention since the bicycle (and would be even better if we could use carriers other than AT&T, whose service sucks where I live: Pasadena.)
Who do you think is a sexy geek?
What do you think is sexy - in general terms?
Self-confidence, poise, fitness, strength, naturalness, intelligence.
I hear you bicycle a lot. What do you think about on your rides?
I think about what I’m going to do when I’m done riding, like go to Starbucks for an iced Venti Latte. When I ride alone I usually listen to audio books. I’ve listened to about 400 books since I started doing that in the early 1990s (starting with a Sony Walkman–ancient technology indeed!)
What’s the longest bicycle ride you’ve been on? What was it like to finish the ride?
3,180 miles from Los Angeles to New York, nonstop in the Race Across America. One races RAAM because it feels so good to stop! (And sleep, and eat…). I did that race five times. The most memorable one was in 1982 when we finished at the Empire State Building (starting at the Santa Monica Pier). I had no idea if I could even finish the race, so when I crossed over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan after a very long night in New Jersey, on an early Sunday morning with no traffic, I was so happy and relieved and emotional that I could hardly talk at the end. Diana Nyad was there to interview me with the camera crew from ABC’s Wide World of Sports, who covered the entire race (and won an Emmy award for sports programming for their two-hour documentary special they did on the race). My comments were really lame and afterward I felt like an idiot for not coming up with something clever and funny to say, but I had a serious case of what I call “train brain,” where all your blood is in your legs and your brain doesn’t think too clearly. Add to that 10 days of sleep deprivation and extreme fatigue, and you get what I mean. I rode the 3000 miles in 10 days, 19 hours.
You are in a skeptic pinup calendar looking quite sexy. How did that come about? Tell us more!
That was for the Skepchicks calendar for skepchicks, which means they needed skepdudes. Apparently there aren’t that many sexy skeptics because I made the first cut, and I don’t think of myself as very sexy at all. In any case, we were suppose to do something unique to our hobbies or interests, and since I like riding bikes the photographer asked me to ride my bike up this really steep climb, over and over, while he photographed me sweating and straining. But in those apparently I wasn’t sweating and straining in a very sexy manner, because he had me take off my shirt and then just photographed in focus my hand on the brake handle of my bike. Woo woo, nothin sexier than a bare-knuckled hand on a brake handle!
What is your favorite thing to eat?
Granola with fruit. Or a fine New York cut steak (they balance each other).
In 10 words or less, can you describe Richard Dawkins?? We think he’s quite sexy too. 
The most intellectually courageous person I have ever met.
