Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Michael Shellenberger is the kind of person with the intellectual honesty to change his mind. He’s a former progressive activist who changed his tune publicly on nuclear energy, homelessness, and a bunch of other issues where the left-wing consensus turned out to be wrong. He’s also the author of Apocalypse Never and San Fransicko, and runs Public, one of the bigger Substacks out there.
What I find most interesting about him is that he’s a rare public figure who actually evaluates and sifts through the evidence of conspiracy theories on a case by case basis. Most people who are skeptical of the big ones are skeptical of all of them, and most people who believe one tend to believe them all. Shellenberger followed the evidence on Russiagate and the Hunter Biden laptop and concluded those were real. Then he looked at the Jeffrey Epstein case and concluded the conspiracy theory most people believe is not supported by the evidence. It’s a distinction that tells you a lot about how he thinks.
In our conversation, we discuss the psychology of the savior complex, what Shellenberger thinks drives a certain kind of progressive activist, and why he sees a direct line between that psychology and recent acts of left-wing political violence. We also dig into the anti-civilization worldview he thinks underlies modern far-left politics across seemingly unrelated issues, from climate to homelessness to nuclear energy.
Homelessness and nuclear energy are two issues where Shellenberger has been ahead of the curve, and where the political consensus is only now starting to catch up with the evidence. On both, he has a lot to say about why getting the policy right has been so hard, and what it would actually take to solve the issues.
Michael Shellenberger is the kind of person with the intellectual honesty to change his mind. He’s a former progressive activist who changed his tune publicly on nuclear energy, homelessness, and a bunch of other issues where the left-wing consensus turned out to be wrong. He’s also the author of Apocalypse Never and San Fransicko, and runs Public, one of the bigger Substacks out there.
What I find most interesting about him is that he’s a rare public figure who actually evaluates and sifts through the evidence of conspiracy theories on a case by case basis. Most people who are skeptical of the big ones are skeptical of all of them, and most people who believe one tend to believe them all. Shellenberger followed the evidence on Russiagate and the Hunter Biden laptop and concluded those were real. Then he looked at the Jeffrey Epstein case and concluded the conspiracy theory most people believe is not supported by the evidence. It’s a distinction that tells you a lot about how he thinks.
In our conversation, we discuss the psychology of the savior complex, what Shellenberger thinks drives a certain kind of progressive activist, and why he sees a direct line between that psychology and recent acts of left-wing political violence. We also dig into the anti-civilization worldview he thinks underlies modern far-left politics across seemingly unrelated issues, from climate to homelessness to nuclear energy.
Homelessness and nuclear energy are two issues where Shellenberger has been ahead of the curve, and where the political consensus is only now starting to catch up with the evidence. On both, he has a lot to say about why getting the policy right has been so hard, and what it would actually take to solve the issues.
