Michael Shermer speaks with political scientist Marlene Laruelle about Russia’s turbulent transformation during the 1990s and the rise of Vladimir Putin, why the Kremlin so badly misjudged Ukraine, China’s rise and its ambitions regarding Taiwan, why killing Iran’s Supreme Leader and much of its senior leadership did not bring down the regime, the limits of foreign aid and sanctions, mass surveillance, economic nationalism, and whether Western democracy can survive an age of economic pessimism and technological control.

Marlene Laruelle is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Luiss University in Rome. From 2011 to 2025, she served as research professor of international affairs and political science at George Washington University. She directs the Illiberalism Studies Program, a transatlantic initiative based in Washington, D.C., and Paris at Inalco. A specialist in Russia and the post-Soviet region, her work examines ideology, geopolitics, and culture, with a current focus on the rise of illiberal and postliberal ideologies in Europe and the United States.

How do men and women differ? Where do the differences come from? And how do they shape modern life?

Drawing on a century of research and a billion years of evolution, Steve Stewart-Williams explains why many sex differences appear despite socialization, not because of it; why in our mating and parenting patterns, humans are more like the average bird than the average mammal; and why sex differences are sometimes a sign of societal health rather than injustice.

Steve Stewart-Williams is a professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. His first book, Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life, was published in 2010. His second, The Ape That Understood the Universe, was published in 2018. His new book is A Billion Years of Sex Differences.

Michael Shermer makes the case that the U.S. Founding Fathers were not only steeped in Enlightenment values on which the Declaration of Independence was based, but they were also scientists searching to discover moral truths and values on which to base a rational society, which they succeeded in doing in this document along with the Constitution.