NBC's daytime paranormal-themed show The Other Side. He proposed a skepticism-oriented reality show to the producers but it did not move forward. Several years later Fox Family Channel, picked up the series. In 1999, Shermer co-produced and co-hosted the Fox Family TV series Exploring the Unknown. Budgeted at approximately $200,000 per episode, the series was viewed by Shermer as a direct extension of the work done at the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, with a neutral title chosen to broaden viewership. Shermer made a guest appearance in a 2004 episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, in which he argued that events in the Bible constitute "mythic storytelling", rather than events described literally. His stance was supported by the show's hosts, who have expressed their own atheism. The episode in question, The Bible: Fact or Fiction?, sought to debunk the notion that the Bible is an empirically reliable historical record. Opposing Shermer was Paul L. Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University. Shermer presented at the three Beyond Belief events from 2006 to 2008. He has presented at several TED conferences with "Why people believe strange things" in 2006, "The pattern behind self-deception" in 2010, and "Reasonable Doubt" in 2015. Shermer has debated Deepak Chopra several times, including on the ABC News program Nightline in March 2010. In 2012, Shermer was one of three guest speakers at the first Reason Rally in Washington, DC, an event attended by thousands of atheists, where he gave a talk titled "The Moral Arc of Reason." That same year, Shermer participated in an Intelligence Squared debate titled "Science Refutes God" paired with Lawrence Krauss, and opposing Dinesh D'Souza and Ian Hutchinson. He is also an occasional guest on Skepticality, the official podcast of Skeptic. Shermer appeared in the 2014 documentary Merchants of Doubt. Allegations of sexual harassment In 2018, Kimberly Winston reported in The Washington Post that Shermer had "denied allegations of sexual harassment and assault from several women." In 2019 NPR reported that although he was not charged for any wrongdoing, Illinois Wesleyan University had canceled author Shermer’s visit for the President’s Convocation at that institution after it discovered that sexual assault allegations had been made against Shermer. Writing for The Guardian in 2020, Fara Dabhoiwala stated that several of Shermer's public speaking engagements had been canceled as a result of the allegations of sexual harassment and assault from women, allegations that