The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss

Many of you will have been waiting for this podcast after my brief review of Annie Jacobsen’s new book Nuclear War: A Scenario on Critical Mass. I took advantage of our discussion to flesh out some of the harrowing details of her remarkable fictional account of a plausible 72 minutes which began with the launch of a single nuclear missile from North Korea and concludes effectively with the end of modern civilization on the planet. As I indicated in my review, as former Chair of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for over a decade, the horrors of nuclear war were well-known to me, but the realization of how quickly a scenario such as Jacobsen envisages might actually play out was something I had never really imagined.

Jacobsen is no stranger to thinking about defense issues and has penned numerous books on defense-related issues, including a history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. She is also a seasoned fiction writer for television, penning three episodes of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Her new book combines her interest in nuclear war related issues, and interviews with a host of military officials involved in nuclear war planning over the past five decades, with her skill in framing a tense dramatic narrative. The result is compelling.

I know from experience that most people would rather avoid thinking about the threat of nuclear war. But it is only by confronting it directly that the public might have a possibility of at least slowing the military juggernaut, powered by a combination of a huge bureaucracy that works effectively to maintain its existence, and a cold war mentality the drives efforts to continue to grow and modernize our nuclear weapons establishment—all the while in spite of the fact that everyone who has seriously thought about nuclear war knows it is unwinnable. As Einstein, who helped found the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors said over 60 years ago, with the creation of Nuclear Weapons “Everything has changed, save the way we think”. My hope is that discussions like this one may help us change even that.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube.

Michael Turner has been one of the leading pioneers in the emerging field of particle-astrophysics: the effort to understand the large scale properties of our universe by exploring the fundamental microphysics that ultimately governed the earliest moments of the big bang. It has been an area in which most of my own research has been focused, so it is not surprising that Michael I became on and off research collaborators starting about 40 years ago. In 1995 Michael and I published a paper arguing that 70% of the energy of the universe must reside in empty space if the data at the time were to be self-consistent. Three years later two groups confirmed our prediction, and were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2011 for that discovery. Michael later coined the term “dark energy” to describe this completely mysterious quantity.

Michael is not only a leading scientist, he is also a leading expositor of astrophysics, having written one of the seminal books about the physics of the early universe, and he is frequently sought out by journalists to comment on current results, and by academic audiences for his popular lectures. He has a wry sense of humor, and over his more than 40 years of scientific research he has been involved in many of the key developments that have shaped astrophysics. He has also helped direct the national research effort itself, having been a deputy director of the National Science Foundation, and a former president of the American Physical Society.

Mike and I sat down for a long overdue discussion of his own perspectives on the field. We discussed his personal history, motivations, and challenges as a young scientist, and then went on to discuss many of the key areas of progress in cosmology over the past 40 years, including some puzzles which remain today, and about which one often reads in the popular press. For anyone interested in cosmology, our discussion will shed a great deal of light on which problems are real, and which are not, and also give a new perspective for how far we have come over the last half century in unraveling many of the mysteries of the universe.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube.

Jeffrey Sachs was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history when he was promoted only a few years after receiving his PhD. And for good reason. He is one of the most remarkable intellects I know. I have always been amazed and the breadth of his reading and knowledge, and when I give him one of my physics books, he reads it in a day, and comes back with great questions.

Jeffrey has not been content to stay within the confines of academia, and for 17 years served as a senior advisor to the head of the UN, and has worked, sometimes controversially, with numerous governments to help them out of economic hardships. His interest in world affairs has caused him to write a great deal about power politics, global conflict, and diplomacy, and I wanted to sit down and talk to him about two conflicts about which he has written recently, Ukraine and Gaza.

But first, we talked about his own career, his interest in economics, and also his thoughts about the UN, an agency which of late has dropped considerably in my own estimation.

I agree strongly with Jeffrey that only diplomatic solutions to military conflicts have any hope of lasting, and that nationalist politics that sustain military adventurism inevitably only causes the people within both warring countries undue hardship. But how to extricate countries from the cycle of violence is a difficult challenge, and Jeffrey doesn’t mince words in that regard. I have to say that I agree with him wholeheartedly about Ukraine. Not as completely on the Middle East, though our disagreements are subtle. We both agree that a two state solution in the middle east is essential, and detest many policies of the current Israeli government, especially on the west bank (although no more than I think we both detest the policies of the terrorist lunatics governing Gaza, who seem intent on inflicting as much or more hardship on their own populace as any external government does, most often to score political points on the world scene) I am less sanguine about the likelihood that UN troops and Arab nations could or would realistically and fairly implement and police such a situation, but I sympathize with his views that the UN may be the last resort.

I expect I may read some angry feedback about some of Jeffrey’s suggestions, but once again, reasoned discussion, especially about disagreements, is essential if we are to make progress, in science, and in the real world. As a result I feel particularly lucky to have people like Jeffrey to have such discussions with. I hope you are as stimulated and educated by the discussion as I always am when I talk to him.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube.

You’ve probably heard of Serotonin, or Dopamine. Those are the sexy neurotransmitters that get all the press. However, you have probably not heard of Glutamate. Which is a shame because it is probably the most important neurotransmitter in the brain, responsible in large part for its growth, and also its plasticity.

Mark Mattson is a neuroscientist with a distinguished career as Director of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. While initially interested in developmental biology in animals, Mattson’s work in endocrinology led him to become to study the effect of hormones on the brain. Eventually he began to focus on the role of the Glutamate in neuroplasticity and Alzheimers disease. He realized how essential that neurotransmitter was for understanding the very formation of the brain, the growth of neurons, and the formation of axons and dendrites, as well as its key role in brain functions including learning and memory .

I first got to know Mark when we co-organized a workshop on Pattern Processing in the Human Brain, where we invited well known neuroscientists as well as computer scientists and AI researchers to come together to discuss areas of joint interest. The idea was to explore key features that may underlie consciousness, and also to explore how to ensure how to avoid the error-prone brain functioning such as one finds in Schizophrenia as AI systems are developed. The public event associated with the workshop was entitled Creativity and Madness, and involved a dialogue between me and actor Johnny Depp.

Most recently, Mark has written a fascinating book, entitled Sculptor and Destroyer, to describe and explain the importance of Glutamate in brain formation and functioning. We had a fascinating discussion about that, and also how he became interested in the brain after initially planning to become a veterinarian. I hope you find the discussion as enlightening as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube.

I admit I was somewhat intimidated when the prospect of hosting Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist Charles Duhigg on the podcast was raised. What caused my angst was the subject matter we would discuss: Communication.

Hosting this podcast has been a learning experience, in so many ways. Since listeners are very free with advice, especially when they don’t like the conversational aspect of the dialogues, and would prefer an interview format, I have often had to come face to face with my own failures of communication. Charles had just completed a book, Supercommunicators, which has since become a New York Times bestseller about the tools that so-called ‘supercommunicators’ use to bring out the best in conversations. It includes interviews with, and stories about, people from a wide varieties of occupations and experiences, from a former FRB recruiter, to two people on opposite sides of the current gun-control debate, and even to the creators of Big Bang Theory, about how they achieved their goals of communication.

The techniques revealed in the book, and in our conversation, are remarkably illuminating. Perhaps the most important tool, which sounds remarkably simple, but nevertheless is often absent in conversations is to decide in advance what type of conversation one is about to be engaged in: practical, emotional, or social. Without this recognition, the ultimate success of any subsequent conversation is unlikely to be profound.

In our subsequent podcast discussion, I wanted to engage in all three types of conversations, with some clarity in advance about where we were going, beginning as always with what took Charles to the starting point of his writing, and concluding with what the impact on his own personal life had been by all he had learned when researching the book. Thinking about the skills he discussed certainly had an impact on my own efforts during the podcast, and I hope will improve discussions on all future podcasts. You, the listeners, will be the judges of course.

I hope you will enjoy and be enlightened by the ground we covered. As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I have had the privilege of working closely with Frank Wilczek for over 40 years, on and off, and we have written perhaps a dozen scientific papers together over that time. Our collaborations together were always a source of joy, and often of wonder, and I am pleased to say that a number of them had significant impact on our fields of study.

While I have had the privilege of working with many talented scientists during my career, Frank is unique. He is one of the most broadly read, deep, and creative scientists I have known. To first approximation, he has read everything in science, and one of the characteristics of our own collaborations that has been so much fun is entering an entirely new field of study and learning how much is known about it, and how that knowledge might be used in new contexts.

Frank is likely the most significant theoretical physicist of my generation, and along with Ed Witten, perhaps the intellectually most gifted. That he won the Nobel Prize for work performed as a graduate student with David Gross to develop the theory of one of the four known forces in nature is notable, but it just scratches the surface of his interests and accomplishments.

While Frank and I have appeared onstage together on numerous occasions, I was waiting for the opportunity to sit down with him for an extended period to discuss his life in science, and the areas of study that reflect the most significant developments of recent times, and the outstanding challenges in our field. It was a pleasure to be able to do so for this podcast. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and that it inspires your interest in the world around us.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I first stumbled upon the journalist Katherine Brodsky, who has been a commentator and writer for various media outlets, when I heard about her new book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage. The title intrigued me but I admit I was a bit skeptical. Having written and spoken about co-called cancel culture in the academic world, I expected I might find nothing new in her book, but I was wrong.

Katherine was motivated to write her book after her own experience of being mobbed online after having defended a colleague in an online media group she helped moderate, for the crime of having posted a job opportunity at Fox News. While she had become aware of the growing social intolerance she was witnessing around her, it was her own experience that caused to make a crucial decision. These kind of experiences can be debilitating, as she had discovered, and she decided to explore the experiences of others, to see how they had recovered their voices, fought back against the mob, or otherwise moved on.

The stories in No Apologies are poignant, and fascinating. Katherine is a clear and compelling writer, and an eloquent expositor, as I discovered during our discussion. We explored her own experience, her interests in journalism, and her own takeaways from the stories she explored as a journalist, which form the basis of the book. It was a fascinating and provocative discussion, and in many ways uplifting rather than depressing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and that it helps others to deal with the a society that seems to be becoming increasing intolerant to free and open discussion about important issues.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Irwin Shapiro is a remarkable human being by almost any standard. Following his education in physics at Cornell and Harvard, he had a job at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory working on various problems in planetary dynamics, and radar ranging, when he went to a lecture and realized that a completely new phenomenon could occur in General Relativity that no one had proposed in the half-century since Einstein first proposed it. For objects traveling near a massive object like the Sun, the travel time to go from one point to another would be slightly longer than it would be if one simply divided the distance traveled by the speed of light. One might think this is simply due to the fact that light takes a curved trajectory near a massive object, rather than traveling in a straight line. But as Shapiro showed, there is an additional time delay, due to the fact that clocks tick somewhat slower in a gravitational field than they would otherwise.

This effect, now known as the Shapiro Effect has become known as the 4th test of General Relativity, a test the theory passed when Shapiro and collaborators used the Haystack Observatory to carefully measure reception times for radar signal that passed near the sun.

Irwin went from that triumph to Chair the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT, and from there to Harvard to lead the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory. He remains at Harvard, where at 94 years old, as Timkin University Professor, he still teachers classes, is doing research in biology, and plays tennis several times a week!

Besides all of this, Irwin is one of the most lovely and gentle scientists I have known in my career, which continued after my stint at Harvard largely because of encouragement he gave to me at a very difficult time for me. As a result, it was a pure delight to reconnect with him after many years, and have a conversation about his long career, the evolution of science in the 60 odd years that he has been doing it, and about life in general. I hope you enjoy it, and find it as intellectually and emotionally stimulating as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I first became aware of Jonathan Kay through his writing for the online magazine, Quillette. And for full disclosure, I got to know him better because he is one of their editors, and he has edited several of my own pieces for that magazine. Before that, however, I had been a fan of his writing, and was happy to be able to have an extended conversation with him about writing, journalism, false news, and politics, to name a few of the topics we discussed.

Our dialogue occurred shortly after the appearance of a comprehensive 15,000 word piece of investigative journalism piece by Kay about a supposed organized sex-ring in the Psychology Department at McMaster University in Canada. Outrageous claims had surfaced, which ignited the university, and the local media, destroying the careers of various faculty and others, all of which eventually turned out to be false. Kay carefully explored how the original story developed, what factors prompted the University to act, and how local media played up the salacious claims without much investigation. It was a typical example of how false news can propagate, and also an indictment of the way Universities handle such claims, and local media may promote them.

The appearance of this story gave us the opportunity to talk about the state of journalism in general. Jonathan has had a unique career and background, which made him a particularly interesting dialogue partner about this issue. He actually was educated as a metallurgical engineer, and following that he pursued a law degree at Yale University, and was a tax lawyer before eventually becoming disenchanted and deciding to pursue a career in writing and journalism.

He also defies easy labelling. While he was a founding editor of the conservative Canadian newspaper The National Post, he also helped Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau write his memoirs. It is Jonathan’s non-ideological bent, perhaps due to his early training as a scientist and engineer that makes his perspective on today’s news so refreshing. We discussed his own background, what got him into writing, his experiences, and stories including the recent claimed Indigenous Residential School scandal in Canada, and the controversy surrounding the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope in the U.S.

When I contacted Jon this week to let him know the podcast is coming out, I learned that he had just completed a lengthy investigative piece about University of New Hampshire astrophysicist/gender studies social justice warrior Chanda Prescod Weinstein who, in the process of claiming victimization for herself and others, has apparently been bullying, harassing, and intimidating a host of others online, leading to complaints recently being filed at her institution. It coincidentally just came out yesterday, so this podcast is particularly timely. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I enjoyed talking to this fascinating man.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

In mid October the Origins Project Foundation ran two public events in California. The second event was held at the Air and Space Museum in San Diego. I had asked my colleague Brian Keating, who teaches at UCSD and is a Trustee of that museum, whether he might be interested in doing a public dialogue together that we could later both broadcast on our respective podcasts. He and I have each appeared before on each other’s podcasts, and I knew that we could have the kind of comfortable, informative, and fun conversation that might appeal to a live audience, which would make for a different kind of podcast.

I am happy to present here the video record of that live-audience podcast, and the Q&A with the audience that was recorded right after it. Brian and I discussed many things, from forefront cosmology, to the nature of teaching and doing research, as viewed by an experimentalist and a theorist respectively, as well as broader questions associated with science in society today. The questions afterwards were equally interesting. I hope you enjoy both as you listen to or watch the podcast.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Greg Lukianoff is a First Amendment lawyer by training. During his education he began to see how, even among organizations ostensibly created to help protect free speech, how actual free speech was improperly being conflated with harassment or bullying. When he went to work as a legal director of the nascent Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in around 2000, he quickly discovered that in academia, the one place where free speech and open inquiry should be valued above all else, actual free speech was under attack. In the intervening two decades, during which he rose to become director of that Foundation, now renamed to encompass the fact that the attacks on free speech that began in academia have proliferated throughout our society, he has actively worked to fight these attacks. Beyond his legal work, he has become a prolific writer. His 2018 book, co-written with Jonathan Haidt, entitled The Coddling of the American Mind, was influential in encouraging debate and discussion regarding the origins of the victimization mentality that was becoming prevalent in Western Society.

I have been admirer of Greg’s for some time, and have wanted to have a dialogue with him on the podcast. This year, with Rikki Schlott, Greg published The Canelling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions and Threatens us All, and it provided us the ideal opportunity to get together to discuss both his own personal experiences , and also the general concerns we both have about the issues that form the heart of the new book.

What followed was a fascinating conversation about issues we should all care about. Regular readers of Critical Mass and listeners to The Origins Podcast will be aware of some of the examples and concerns we discussed, but I expect will nevertheless be surprised by the ubiquitous infiltration of cancel culture ideas into our society. We actually begin by defining Cancel Culture, a term that has often been misused and misunderstood in the popular media, and then discuss a variety of examples, before closing with a brief discussion of the ways that we can possibly combat it to produce a more tolerant, democratic society, and to save higher education as well. I hope you are provoked, enlightened, and energized by the conversation.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Scott Aaronson is one of the deepest mathematical intellects I have known since, say Ed Witten—the only physicist to have won the prestigious Fields Medal in Mathematics. While Ed is a string theorist, Scott decided to devote his mathematical efforts to the field of computer science, and as a theoretical computer scientist has played a major role in the development of algorithms that have pushed forward the field of quantum computing, and helped address several thorny issues that hamper our ability to create practical quantum computers.

In addition to his research, Scott has, for a number of years, written a wonderful blog about issues in computing, in particular with regard to quantum computing. It is a great place to get educated about many of these issues.

Most recently, Scott has spent the last year at OpenAI thinking about the difficult issue of AI safety, and how to ensure that as AI systems improve that they will not have an unduly negative or dangerous impact on human civilization. As I mention in the podcast I am less worried than some people, and I think so is Scott, but nevertheless, some careful thinking in advance can avert a great deal of hand wringing in the future. Scott has some very interesting ideas that are worth exploring, and we began to explore them in this podcast.

Our conversation ran the gamut from quantum computing to AI safety and explored some complex ideas in computer science in the process, in particular the notion of computational complexity, which is important in understanding all of these issues. I hope you will find Scott’s remarks as illuminating and informative as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Richard Dawkins and I have appeared together onstage many times, been the subject of the documentary The Unbelievers, and have collaborated on various writing projects as well. Thus it may come as a surprise to you to learn that each time we get together, we find new things to discuss and learn from each other. It surprises us as well.

This fall we agreed to appear onstage together at two separate events co-sponsored by The Origins Project. The events, entitled Changing Minds in Changing Times were coordinated by Atheist UK and were in London and Birmingham. In both events I gave short presentations, and at the end of the event Richard and I appeared together onstage for a dialogue. At the first event I was able to discuss with Richard his latest book, Books do Furnish a Life, and at the second event, for the first time, Richard interviewed me, for his new podcast, The Poetry of Reality.

We have combined these two dialogues here into a single podcast. Together they cover a broad collection of subjects, from science, to science communication, and finally to the threats to free inquiry now occurring in higher education.

As always, I find it an absolute pleasure to spend time conversing with Richard. He is charming, eloquent, and insightful. I hope you enjoy these newest discussions as much as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Carlo Rovelli is well known as a popularizer of science. His short book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, was an international bestseller. I have known Carlo as a physicist ever since he used to visit my Physics Department colleague, Lee Smolin, at Yale, when I was a Professor there. Carlo and Lee were part of a small group of physicists pioneering an idea called ‘Loop Quantum Gravity’ as a way to try and unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Less well known among the public than its chief competitor, String Theory, and also less popular among physicists as a whole, Loop Quantum Gravity is nevertheless an equally serious attempt to address the vexing paradoxes associated with of quantizing General Relativity.

Black Holes are the place in physics where the various problems of quantum gravity become manifest. If Stephen Hawking was correct, and black holes do completely evaporate through quantum processes that result in the emission of thermal radiation, then it appears that the information about what fell into the black hole in the first place will be forever lost. But this violates a central feature of quantum mechanics, which preserves information. At the same time, the final state of classical black hole collapse involves a singularity of infinite density. Most physicists expect this singularity to be removed in a quantum theory of black holes.

Rovelli argues that near the singularity of a black hole quantum processes can change a black hole to be a ‘white hole’, the time reversed version of a black hole. While anything that falls into a black hole stays there, everything inside a white hole eventually reappears. If Carlo’s ideas were correct, they could go a long way toward potentially resolving black hole paradoxes.

It is a big ‘If” however, and I remain skeptical. Nevertheless I wanted to discuss these ideas with Carlo on this podcast for a variety of reasons. First, any such discussion will illuminate a lot about the physics of black holes. Secondly, I think it is useful for laypeople to listen to physicists debate and discuss ideas at the forefront, presenting challenges to each other, being willing to openly question, and doing all of this with a sense of mutual respect.

At the same time, because I share Carlo’s great interest in both popularizing science, as well as connecting science and culture, I was extremely interested in discussing his motivations and thoughts about these important areas, and I was not disappointed. I hope listeners will find our discussions about science, literature, and politics equally enlightening.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I have been a fan of Robert Sapolsky’s for a long time. He is a creative force, with wide ranging knowledge, from primatology to neuroscience, and he is also a wonderful expositor of science. His previous book, Behave, was a wide ranging exploration of human behavior, at its best and worst. I have been wanting to do a podcast with him for some time, and the launch of his new book, Determined, gave us the opportunity. I got an advanced copy and we recorded this a few weeks ago, so that this podcast could post on the book’s publication date.

Had it been anyone else, I admit I wouldn’t have bothered to go through the book. I have long felt the issue of free will is overplayed. The laws of physics are deterministic, and since biology and chemistry are based on physics, I have never doubted that free will is an illusion, but have also felt that for all intents and purposes the world we live in is indistinguishable from a world with free will, so we should take responsibility for our actions.

As is often the case when reading Robert’s works, my view has now become more nuanced. His book masterfully discusses the neurobiology behind the illusion of free will, what actually interests me the most, and he effectively demolished claims of numerous philosophers, including Dan Dennett and others, that some magic occurs between the level of neurons and the level of the full brain that allows for some uncaused behavior.

Along the way, we are taken on a masterful and fun ride through modern neurobiology. And at the end, Sapolsky confronts the more serious question of crime and punishment in a world where free will is an illusion, and convincingly argues that in a world where bad luck early on gets multiplied throughout ones life, society can far more effectively and honestly deal with crime by abolishing the notion of punishment, replacing it with behaviorally more effective methods.

In our podcast, as we always do, we discussed Sapolsky’s origins. What got him interested in science. How did his 30 years working with primates impact on his view of humans, and more. I found it a fascinating discussion, and I hope you will too.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I have felt privileged to know the remarkable scholar Peter Singer as a friend and colleague for over a decade. We first met, I believe, in the context of atheism, but our discussions have ranged far more broadly, and his impact on my own thinking has been substantial. He and I engaged in a public dialogue in Arizona eight or nine years ago, and preparing for that discussion changed my views about world in many ways. Peter actually had an impact on my life even earlier than that, as when my daughter was very young. The late Katharine Thalberg, who ran the famous Explore Bookstore in Aspen where I often did book signings, and who, along with her spouse Bill Stirling, rang an unsuccessful campaign to ban furs in Aspen, saw how much my then seven year old loved her dogs, and she gave Lilli a copy of Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation, to read when she got older. I don’t know if Lilli ever did read it, but she became a vegetarian well before I did.

Peter, perhaps more than anyone else alive, has effectively promoted the cause of animal welfare, coining the term “species-ism” to describe the fact that a proper ethics should include an equal consideration of welfare for not just all people, but all creatures. He has backed up his position with a comprehensive discussion of the disgusting manner in which animals are made to suffer in the context of industrial scale food preparation for humans. That includes not just cattle, pigs, and chickens, but also fish. Whether or not one continues to choose to eat meat, we should all at least be aware of what we are signing on for by doing so.

This year Peter updated Animal Liberation so that it is called Animal Liberation Now, to record the developments that have taken place in the almost 50 years since the book first appeared. His arguments remain as dramatic and clear as they were then, and what I particularly enjoy about Peter is how he combines the philosopher’s tools of analytical logic, with a scientist’s tools of gathering of evidence. The end result is a compelling treatise, and I was thrilled that Peter agreed to sit down again for a comprehensive discussion of the ideas in his book.

We took advantage of this opportunity to talk about Peter’s interest in Effective Altruism, about which he has also written extensively. This is the effort to do the most good in the world by empirically examining both what sorts of charities do the most good for the most people, and also exploring how much of one’s own resources one can readily part with in the process without substantially changing one’s lifestyle. Once again, his discussions may change the way you think, and act.

I hope you enjoy our comprehensive dialogue, for which he generously contributed significant time, as much as I did. And I hope it provokes the same kind of personal reflections for you as it did for me.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

And a reminder that The Origins Project Foundation is programming two live events in Southern California museums. Oct 15th, at the Bowers Museum, I will be giving a presentation on my new book, and Oct 17th Brian Keating and I will be recording a joint podcast at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Go to originsproject.org for more info and the opportunity to purchase tickets.

I confess that Hakeem Oluseyi had not really risen on my radar screen until the last year or two. I was aware of the National Society of Black Physicists, having sometimes gotten notices about is meetings, but, being generally unsupportive of current efforts to compartmentalize scientists by their identity, I hadn’t really paid much notice to it. Then, in one of those ironies that periodically makes one feel better about the vicissitudes of fortune, I learned more about him only after people had attempted to cancel him.

When I read about Hakeem’s brave and impressive campaign to uncover the truth about James Webb after a small but unduly loud group of physicists, whose actions seem to be centered about their mutually celebrated victimhood, argued that the James Webb Space Telescope should be renamed, my interest in him, along with my respect for him, rose considerably.

Prompted by this newfound interest, I read a book he had co-authored, entitled, A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars, and I was fascinated by the remarkable transformation of a hillbilly turned drug dealer into an academic. Here was someone who could have reveled in begin a victim by lashing out in hate, but instead was inspired to improve himself and those around him. I decided I wanted to delve deeper into the man, his life, his science, and his recent unfortunate experiences while holding firm to the search for truth in a podcast. It was a fun, and fascinating few hours. Hakeem and I both like to joke as well as tell stories, and we are both serious about the effort to understand nature, and to share our enthusiasm about that effort. I hope the combination of our mutual enjoyment about life and science, along with learning about his own story will inspire, entertain and inform. I certainly enjoyed our discussion and I hope you will as well.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

And a reminder that The Origins Project Foundation is programming some live upcoming events, including a live podcast with Richard Dawkins in Birmingham Sept 25th, and two live events in Southern California museums. Oct 15th, at the Bowers Museum, I will be giving a presentation on my new book, and Oct 17th Brian Keating and I will be recording a joint podcast at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Go to originsproject.org for more info and the opportunity to purchase tickets.

As promised at the beginning of this month, here is the first of two “Best of” selections from the Origins Podcast. I apologize that this hasn’t come out sooner, but the lazy days of August caught up with all of our production team. In any case, here, on the last day of August (in all US timezones), enjoy this collection of great clips from many of our exciting guests over the first two years of the podcast. These were all recorded before the pandemic and so we were able to travel to talk with my guests at their location, or bring them to our origins studio. As a result, they were all shot with 3 cameras, so the video record is better than one gets on zoom. This video version is available now to paid subscribers, and this audio version is available to all subscribers. A Youtube version will be released later this week. I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed putting this compilation together.

For those of you who are Origins veterans, we will give you a chance to relive the highlights from podcasts with some of the most remarkable scientists, artists, and writers on the planet. For those of you who are newer subscribers this will give you a chance to see some tidbits from some fascinating conversations with fascinating individuals, and perhaps encourage you to explore our backlist for the full discussions.

We will return with new content in September, and will release the second “Best Of” compilation sometime later in the fall. Once again, thanks for your support of Critical Mass, which remains an essential part of allowing The Origins Project Foundation to continue its programming.

Enjoy!

I have admired Bart Ehrman’s writing for more than a decade. I remember how profoundly reading Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great reminded me of how little I had really understood about the scriptures. For me, Bart Ehrman took over from there. I recalled reading his 2014 masterpiece How Jesus Became God, which made it clear that the modern Western Interpretation of the Holy Trinity differs significantly from the earliest impressions of Jesus, and moreover that the notion of humans intermingling with deities has a long and checkered history. He also made it clear that the Resurrection, perhaps the cornerstone of Modern Christianity, is highly suspect, based on burial traditions at theme.

I have been trying to work out a time to record a podcast with Bart for some time, and was fortunate that his schedule opened up recently, following the publication of his newest book, Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About The End. This book provides a detailed analysis of the Book of Revelations, and describes how perhaps the most iconic modern interpretation of End Times, The Rapture, is a modern mythological invention and is itself not even scriptural.

In our dialogue we explored Bart’s own intellectual adventure from fundamentalist youth to Biblical Scholar, from true believer to skeptical historian. We then explored some of the most enlightening aspects of his writing. It was a fascinating, entertaining, and informative discussion, and one that I hope will be widely viewed. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

This is part two of the second podcast dialogue we are airing with renowned astrophysicist, Astronomer Royal, and former President of the Royal Society, Lord Martin Rees. The first time I sat down with Martin for the Podcast we discussed his life in science, and topics ranging from the state of modern cosmology to the potential conflicts between science and religion (which he views as minimal, and I don’t). Martin’s thinking, and his expertise, go far beyond these topics however. Based on his experience at the Royal Society, as an elected member of the House of Lords, and working with the Center for Existential Risk at Cambridge, Martin has thought carefully about the challenges we face as a society in the 21st century, and how science can be marshaled to help us address these challenges. He has written a new book on the subject called If Science is to Save Us. I thought it would be useful and interesting to sit down with Martin to discuss the ideas he raises there, and our conversation turned out to be so wide-ranging that we are presenting it in two separate episodes of the podcast. I am sure you will find his thoughtful and incisive comments both provocative and inspiring. As always, I benefitted greatly from my conversation with him, and I hope you do as well.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I have to say that Douglas Murray reminds me in several ways of my late friend Christopher Hitchens. It is not merely that they are both English, eloquent and well-read. Douglas doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and pulls no punches when necessary. But he is otherwise charming, thoughtful, and willing to enter into respectful intelligent conversations on many topics. Both Douglas and Christopher have been journalists covering dangerous parts of the world, which has helped shape some of their views. Douglas is more conservative, Christopher was in some ways more liberal, but their deep reserve of knowledge combining literature and current events makes listening to either one of them compelling.

I first got to know Douglas through his marvelous book, The Madness of Crowds, a take-off on Charles Murray’s 1841 classic Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which was “A distillation of some of the most humiliating, terrifying, and confusing things humans have done in collectivity”… treating things like alchemy, haunted houses, and the crusades. Douglas’ book discusses modern craziness, cutting with surgeon-like skill to the heart of issues related to gender, race, identity politics, and of course free speech.

The Madness of Crowds was followed more recently by The War on The West, which took up where the former book left off, dealing with issues ranging from postmodern attacks on the western Canon, attacks on modern science, and more recent ‘Critical Race Theory’ related attacks on modern western society.

I discussed all of these issues with Douglas, but was very pleased to be able to bookend the dialogue, front and back, with a discussion of poetry. He writes a weekly column for Free Press on the virtue and joy of committing great poems to memory, and while I have a limited appreciation and tolerance for poetry in general, there are a few poets, T.S. Eliot, and Rainer Maria Rilke in particular, who I greatly enjoy. It was a pleasure to listen to Douglas recite some favorite lines, and to discuss these sublime subjects with him before and after we dropped down into the muck that comprises the modern culture wars.

I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Andrei Linde is one of the world’s leading cosmological theorists, and is the father of much of Inflationary Cosmology. After Alan Guth developed the original idea of Inflation, Linde, who had been active in this area while working in Moscow, realized a way to make a workable theory out of it, resolving a major problem, called the ‘Graceful Exit’ problem. After that, he made the striking realization that Inflation is inevitable, even in relatively simple theoretical models, and moreover that Inflation will in general be eternal, spawning an infinite number of ‘pocket universes’, as Guth calls them, over an infinite amount of time. While there is much talk about multiverses in the context of string theory, it is the Inflationary Multiverse that is most well motivated, and is currently the most widely accepted picture of the global structure of space and time at the present moment.

Andrei is not only an incredible creative scientist, he is a charming fellow. I have enjoyed my interactions with him since I first met him, about 40 years ago. He is one of a handful of leading Russian scientists who were snapped up by the US after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since arriving in the US he has helped lead a vibrant program in Cosmology and String Theory at Stanford University. I was very excited to finally be able to have a dialogue with Andrei for The Origins Podcast. His teaching schedule precluded doing something each time I had reached out to him in the past, so I felt very fortunate when the stars aligned, or at least his teaching schedule and my recording schedule aligned. What resulted is a fascinating conversation with a remarkable scientist, and a lovely conversationalist. We discussed his own experiences in Russia and then again after emigrating, as well as Inflation, Multiverses, and the state of modern cosmology. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

I first met William Shatner a little over 19 years ago when we were filming a TV inspired in part on my book, The Physics of Star Trek. The show was ultimately titled, How William Shatner Changed the World. I am not sure what I expected when I met Bill, but what I got was something completely different. After a brief period during which I felt a bit like I was being auditioned, and which I passed after we filmed a scene in which I was required to use a teleprompter to spout a long series of Star Trek technobabble, we settled in to begin to discuss the world, and I fell a bit in love.

Bill reminded me in many ways of my Uncle, who had long been my favorite relative, and the patriarch of our rather small family. His humor, his confidence, his energy, and his curiosity emerged from the crumbling armor he had originally amassed to potentially protect from him what he may have expected to be a pestering nerd. (And which, for all I know, I may have been).

As the days wore on (I think we spent 3-4 together in total), we began to talk about science and the world, and I was impressed not just with Bill’s intense curiosity and enthusiasm, but his native intelligence. Once again, I guess I had not been prepared for that.

A decade later, and perhaps seven or eight years ago, we spent a week on a Star Trek Cruise together. He of course was the headliner, and I gave some science lectures, and ended up doing two programs on stage with him—one on the program, and one more impromptu. While perhaps billed as a dialogue, the provided an opportunity for Bill to pepper me with questions about all things physics, trade jokes, and overall have a blast. I suspect that is the norm. He invests everything he gets involved in with the same joy, and charm.

So, I was over the moon, when after discussing the possibility of doing The Origins Podcast for over 2 years, Bill finally, in a weak moment, I assume, agreed. It took about 30 seconds for the same sense of fun and joy to take over, a deep friendliness to be transparent, and for Bill to basically take over. From there, I held on to my chair and just tried to enjoy the wild ride. It was fun, and informative. I had 5 pages of questions to ask him, and I managed to sneak in about 3 or 4 questions. Instead the conversation went wherever it went—most often to questions about the Universe—and it was one of the most enjoyable 90 minutes I have spent in awhile. It also gave me a chance to reconnect with Bill, and I don’t plan to wait another decade before doing it again. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

This is the second podcast dialogue we are airing with renowned astrophysicist, Astronomer Royal, and former President of the Royal Society, Lord Martin Rees. The first time I sat down with Martin for the Podcast we discussed his life in science, and topics ranging from the state of modern cosmology to the potential conflicts between science and religion (which he views as minimal, and I don’t). Martin’s thinking, and his expertise, go far beyond these topics however. Based on his experience at the Royal Society, as an elected member of the House of Lords, and working with the Center for Existential Risk at Cambridge, Martin has thought carefully about the challenges we face as a society in the 21st century, and how science can be marshaled to help us address these challenges. He has written a new book on the subject called If Science is to Save Us. I thought it would be useful and interesting to sit down with Martin to discuss the ideas he raises there, and our conversation turned out to be so wide-ranging that we are presenting it in two separate episodes of the podcast. This is the first release, and I am sure you will find his thoughtful and incisive comments both provocative and inspiring. As always, I benefitted greatly from my conversation with him, and I hope you do as well.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

On Nov 15th and 16th, 2022, The Origins Project Foundation hosted their first public events in North America at the beautiful Orpheum Theater in Phoenix, AZ (we had hosted an event in Iceland in September during our Greenland-Iceland Travel Adventure). There was no better way to begin this new series than with a dialogue onstage with Richard Dawkins, and that was the substance of our first night’s event. As all those who have followed us will know, Richard and I have done many dialogues together, onstage and online, and so it was important that this dialogue be new and different.

Richard had just published a new book entitled “Books do Furnish a Life”, which is a compilation of essays he had written about other scientists and writers, and also transcripts of dialogues he had had with numerous people, including me. I decided this new book would provide a wonderful opportunity to jump off in new directions, and it turned out to be just that. The response from the audience and from those who had seen many of our previous dialogues was very positive, and we came off stage feeling like it was one of the best public conversations we have had. I hope those of you who watch it, or listen to it, here will agree.

Following our 90 minute dialogue onstage we asked for questions from the audience, and after an intermission, we answered many of these. This Q&A will be offered as an exclusive post for Critical Mass paid subscribers, to thank you for your support of our efforts. It will remain behind the Critical Mass paywall for 1 month, and then will be released to the general public.

I hope all of you enjoy this conversation, and Richard’s remarkable enthusiasm about science and writing, and his insights about the world. In a future post, we will release the video record of the second night’s conversation, a panel discussion with leading physicists about the current state of cosmology.

Finally, later this month we will open our newest travel adventure, a trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Island, for booking for the general public. Critical Mass subscribers will have an advance opportunity to book one of the 36 berths on this voyage. Stay tuned.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

John Preskill is the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Physics at Caltech, a title many physicists would cherish. He is widely known in the field for his work as a theoretical physicist spearheading the field of Quantum Computing, where he is Director of Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, but his expertise and contributions span a far broader spectrum of topics. His background is in theoretical particle physics, gravitation, and cosmology. As a graduate student, his seminal work on the cosmological implications of magnetic monopoles in Grand Unified Theories helped lead Alan Guth to develop his theory of Inflationary Cosmology, in part to resolve a cosmological conundrum John first elucidated. Since that time, John has explored condensed matter systems and the physics of black holes, made a famous bet with Stephen Hawking, and coined the term “quantum supremacy”, to describe a metric that might reveal the first time a quantum computer resolved a problem that a classical computer could not resolve in a feasible human timescale.

As Director the Caltech Institute, John leads one of the most vibrant programs exploring quantum information and quantum computation, and I was happy to have the opportunity to connect again with my old friend and colleague to discuss this rapidly evolving field, about which so much is written in the popular press, and which may impact on all of our lives in the 21st century. In our discussion we tried to separate the wheat from the chaff, to discuss the future of the field, its current state, and challenges and opportunities. In addition, we discussed his own scientific career and the physics areas that have excited him, and what helped drive him to become a physicist in the first place. It was a fascinating discussion and I am sure you will be both entertained, and enlightened.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Tim Palmer graduated from Oxford with a PhD in mathematical physics, working on general relativity, and got a postdoc to work with Stephen Hawking. He turned it down and moved into the field of meteorology, and then moved on to Climate Change studies, where he pioneered the development of what is called ‘ensemble forecasting’ to predict both long term climate change, as well as short term weather predictions. This technique has now become a standard in the field, and is necessary to properly account for possible chaotic behavior in atmospheric systems.

Even simple classical systems can be chaotic—implying that even minute changes in initial conditions can sometimes produce dramatic variations in their later evolution. The canonical hyperbolic example is a butterfly flapping its wings in Kansas might later cause a violent storm on the Eastern Seaboard.

On first glance, it may seem that this would imply all predictivity must go out the window, but over the past 40 years techniques have been developed for dealing with the so-called ‘fractal’ distributions that often result from chaotic dynamics, and as a result, it has become possible to constrain the range of possible long term outcomes of chaotic behavior.

Tim Palmer has recently written a new book, entitled The Primacy of Doubt, which provides a wonderful discussion about the importance of accounting for doubt and uncertainty in a wide variety of systems, from weather to medicine, and even includes discussions of there possible implications of his ideas for the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and gravity. While I am more skeptical of his nevertheless intriguing latter arguments, Tim and I had a fascinating and informative discussion about his own experiences as a scientist, and the importance of explicitly incorporating a range of initial conditions when exploring weather and climate predictions.

For many people, uncertainty is something to be avoided, but in physics, uncertainty is an inherent part of our understanding of the world, and it must be faced head-on. Being able to make quantitative predictions with likelihoods that have meaning requires it, and science is the only area of human inquiry where we can state with great quantitative accuracy what the likelihood is that a given prediction will be correct. This is a triumph of the scientific process and deserves to be better understood. In this regard, there are fewer better guides than Tim Palmer, and it was a delight to spend time with him on this podcast, which will enlighten and entertain.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Note: Due to internet difficulties due to storms in California delaying uploading of the video, the video post of this podcast will be delayed by a few hours. We are thus releasing the audio version now. (Usually these are released at the same time.)

Seven years ago I invited Elizabeth Kolbert to participate in a dialogue about Extinctions at the Orpheum Theater in Phoenix, following the publication of her Pulitzer Prizewinning masterpiece, The Sixth Extinction. Once we began The Origins Podcast, I knew that I wanted to have an in depth discussion with her about her work reporting on science issues, most importantly on climate change and other technological challenges facing modern society. An opportunity arose with the publication of her most recent book, Under a White Sky, which focuses on how scientists, and politicians, have attempted—with with widely varying degrees of success—to address the unintended consequences of various human alterations of terrestrial ecosystems. It is a fascinating book, told, as is typical in her writing, by relating personal experiences as Elizabeth has traveled the world to meet scientists and others spearheading attempts at solving sometimes urgent ecological crises induced as a result of the application of previous human technologies.

Elizabeth writes so clearly about science that I wanted to explore her own journey, from a student focusing on German literature, to one of the pre-eminent science writers in the country, working as a staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine. We had a wide ranging discussion about her own experiences and then moved on to discuss more broadly the issues raised in her most recent books.

Incidentally, the title of her new book comes from the fact that one of the side-effects of solar geoengineering, which I expect will be an inevitable response to climate change in a world where governments and businesses prefer to carry on business as usual in spite of concerns about rising temperatures, sea levels, and other potentially dangerous consequences of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The effect in question, if aerosols are injected in the upper atmosphere to reduce the intensity of solar radiation impinging on the earth’s surface, will be to cause formerly bright blue skies to instead resemble the whiter skies those who live in big cities are used to. A potentially unfortunate consequence, but perhaps less unfortunate than other potential consequences of global climate change.

The conversation was fantastic. Everything I had hoped for. We went on for over 2 hours, but the time passed quickly because it was so fascinating. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And by the way, if you enjoy this podcast, Elizabeth will be joining the Origins Project Foundation Galapagos Travel Adventure in January of 2024. Reservations will open up at the beginning of April for this exciting trip, with Elizabeth, Frans de Waal, me, and 33 other Origins voyagers. I hope you can join us.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

In December it was announced that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition facility has achieved its first goal of “Ignition”, in which 192 powerful lasers focused on a small pellet of fuel led to a sustained fusion reaction for a fraction of a second that released more energy than it received from the incident laser light. Following on requests from many readers, I describe the science behind this experiment, and the wishful thinking associated with it, regarding the possible use of fusion as an unlimited power source for humanity in the future.

This special holiday edition of Science Matters accompanies our last podcast, with Augusten Burroughs, which was about another kind of wishful thinking. I hope you enjoy this science as much as I hope you enjoyed that delightful discussion with a wonderful writer.

Happy Holidays from Critical Mass, The Origins Foundation, the Origins Podcast, and from me.

I want to be upfront. I love Augusten Burroughs. I fell in love with him when I first read Running with Scissors, and every time I have picked up anything he has written, I have that warm feeling knowing I will delight in the scrumptious experience that is associated with reading his work.

Shortly after creating the Origins Podcast in 2019, I discovered that Augusten was going to have a new book coming out, and I contacted him to ask if he might come by the studio and do a podcast if his book tour passed nearby. To my great happiness, he said he would love to come by and would send me a prepublication copy of the book so I might prepare.

So it was that I received Toil and Trouble: A Memoire, and discovered to my surprise that it was a memoir describing his, and his mother’s experiences as witches. I read the book carefully and tried to decide what to do. The dilemma was somewhat similar to that I faced when I wrote The Physics of Star Trek. I didn’t want to write a book that would simply say “This won’t work” over and over again. Similarly, I didn’t want to offer blanket denials of Augusten’s claims. Instead, I decided I would try and use the opportunity to discuss science and skepticism and apply those ideas to various examples in the book.

After we finished the podcast, we weren’t sure when the right time to release it would be. I didn’t want to cast any negative shadows on the book during its initial release, and I wanted to time it appropriately after we had amassed a catalog of podcasts with scientists and artists that would give some perspective on the discussion we had.

When we thought about a holiday edition podcast the dialogue with Augusten came to mind. I confess I had forgotten the details and was a little worried. I needn’t have worried, however. I had forgotten how much fun it was, and how much fun any conversation with Augusten can be. Moreover, he comes at almost all ideas and experiences with the characteristics of a scientist. He is realistic, skeptical, and willing to be wrong. It is so refreshing.

We began the podcast by once again discussing his dysfunctional childhood, which he covers so beautifully in a number of his books. It is a fascinating dive into issues of mental illness, and victimhood, the latter of which he happily demonstrates is in the eye of the beholder. But the purpose of this discussion is to put in context the discovery, when he was a young boy, that he was a witch. A discovery revealed by his mother, who told him that he came from a long of witches after he has an experience that he would describe as a sort of remote sensing, associated with an accident his grandmother had. From there we discuss more modern examples.

I truly enjoyed listening to Augusten again in the podcast, which presents, in my mind, a good example of how to have a difficult but respectful conversation, and how science and skepticism can and should be applied to wishful thinking—something that Augusten would certainly agree with. As Richard Feynman once said, after all: The easiest person to fool is yourself. Throughout, Augusten is charming and enjoyable, and listening to him describe his own experiences is alone worth the listen.

I hope you enjoy this part 1 of our Holiday Podcast. Part 2 will be released after Xmas, and is a special holiday edition of Science Matters, where I discuss wishful thinking associated with a scientific development that dominated much of the media earlier this month. I hope you enjoy both, complementary discussions.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Cormac McCarthy is a literary icon. Winner of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel All the Pretty Horses, and the Pulitzer Prize for his apocalyptic novel The Road, Norma’s earlier novel, Blood Meridian has been labelled The Great American Novel.

Many people did not know that this cultural giant is also fascinated by, and amazingly knowledgeable about science. Reading his newest books, The Passenger and Stella Maris (released this week!), however, and that becomes obvious. The protagonists are mathematical and physics prodigies, and just as one may requires a dictionary to keep up with the the remarkably diverse prose in Cormac’s writing, some people may need to consult some popular books on science to fully appreciate the scientific asides sprinkled throughout both volumes.

I first met Cormac at the Santa Fe Institute back when I was considering a possible position there as its Director, some years ago. I was shocked to walk into the kitchenette there and discover him, as I had no idea that is where he spent his time. But, as we discuss in our dialogue, he moved to Santa Fe at the invitation of Nobel Laureate physicist Murray Gell Mann to join the new Institute.

Cormac and I became fast friends then, and have remained friends ever since. The best hour of radio I ever did was with Cormac and Werner Herzog, on the occasion of Herzog’s film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, where both Cormac and Werner talked with amazing authority about the evolution paleontology of early modern humans. Then later, he honored me by asking if he could copyedit the paperback version of my book Quantum Man, a scientific biography of Richard Feynman. He said he wanted to make the paperback version ‘perfect’, in part by removing all exclamation marks and semicolons.. Of course I said yes, and we added his name as copyeditor on the front page!

I have known that Cormac is extremely reluctant to appear in public or do interviews. He agreed to appear in our film The Unbelievers, which was a great gift, but has often demurred when I have asked him to appear in other public panels on subjects we love to talk about in private. So, when I asked him if, on the occasion of the publication of his new books, the first books in 16 years, if we could sit down and record a conversation about science for The Origins Podcast, I was shocked and thrilled when he agreed. He is 89 years old now, and I was so pleased to have the chance to record some of his thoughts on science for posterity.

He invited us into his home for an afternoon conversation after a long lunch, and the conversation that ensued was much like the conversations we have had over the years. Cormac loves to discuss science, but prefers to listen to physicists talk about their work rather than initiate conversations. He is, after all, notoriously laconic. But when he does speak about science, his insights are fascinating. Using some of the ideas discussed in his new books a launching points, our discussion ranged over quantum mechanics, the role of mathematics in science, and whether there will ever be a theory of everything.

There were a variety of challenges that day, including the difficulty of filming something in a sunlight room without window shades, but the end result was unique and memorable. I hope you agree.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Find Brian’s INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/39UaHlB and on Spotify here spoti.fi/3vpfXok 

Brian Keating is an observational cosmology whose work has focused on measuring a possible imprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) that could have come from the earliest moments of the Big Bang, and could even give possible indirect evidence for a multiverse. Indeed, an experiment he worked, called BICEP 2, in 2014 announced a possible result which electrified the science community, and clearly would have resulted in at least one Nobel Prize, had it been verified by other experiments. Unfortunately it turned out that the observed signal was due to an unanticipated dust background in our Galaxy. Brian has written about this experience in a book.

Brian has not given up the search however, and is spearheading a new major observatory, supported by the Simons Foundation, to push observations of the CMBR to continue to probe for primordial signatures of Inflation.

In addition to his scientific work, Brian is engaged in a host of projects aimed at improving the public’s understanding of science, including his own podcast, and also work he has done in San Diego to help excite kids about mathematics—running programs that I have been fortunate enough to be involved in.

We discuss all of these activities as well as his own rather unique background in a refreshing discussion about the ups and downs of science, the importance of public understanding, and also the exciting possibilities for the future of cosmology. And we have the kind of give and take discussion between a theorist and experimentalist that may be useful for non-scientists to listen to.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most recognizable faces of science in the world, and for good reason. He has thought a lot about how to engage people in the wonder and joy of science, something that is also near and dear to my own heart, and to the spirit of many of my own activities, including The Origins Podcast. I was so happy that Neil agreed to return to have another dialogue on the podcast following the release of his new book, Starry Messenger, because it provided us with the opportunity to have the kind of give and take discussion that I so enjoy having with him, and which I also think is so important for people to get to watch. Neil and I share many of the same sensibilities but we don’t agree about everything, and our perspectives are sometimes different. We try to share those different perspectives with each other by respectful dialogue, and discussion. Sometimes we change each others’ minds, or at least I like to think we do.

That aspect of science, open questioning, joint enthusiasm for trying to find what he calls objective truth, and what I am less willing to label as such, is one of the things he discusses in his book, and I think our dialogue provides a great example of how science can help us move forward together toward a possibly brighter future.

It will be interesting to hear what you think about our discussion. In the end I hope you will find it as entertaining and informative as I did.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Pete Boghossian is a philosopher with little tolerance for nonsense, whose efforts to broadly encourage critical thinking using Socratic methods began early on. While doing his PhD, he worked with inmates to see if he could impact on their moral reasoning through a process of Socratic questioning.

Viewing faith-based beliefs as delusional, he worked on ways to encourage believers to question their beliefs. Because of the inherent difficulties in having such conversations Peter later worked with James Linsdsay to produce a book entitled How to Have Impossible Conversations, outlining a series of techniques aimed at producing productive, rather than defensive, conversations.

These techniques form a part of his current program of Street Epistemology, where he takes critical thinking and questioning out into the public, traveling around the country having a series of open conversations with people, and seeing if they are willing to change their beliefs.

Peter became more well known among the public when, with Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, he wrote a series of spoof papers submitted to gender studies journals, designed to show what they regarded as the lack of true scholarship in that discipline. Then, most recently, he resigned his position at Portland State University in response to what he said was harassment from the administration, and its lack of commitment to free speech and open inquiry.

All of these topics provided fodder for a fascinating discussion, which I hope you enjoy.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Frans de Waal is not only my favorite primatologist, he is one of my favorite scientist-communicators. His books on primates, particularly on Bonobos and Chimpanzees—from politics to child-rearing and even culture—reveal a tremendous amount about our closest genetic relatives, and hence about ourselves. His newest book, Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, tackles a particularly hot topic at the current time, but as is typical of his books, this one is both entertaining, and touching, and packed with data rather than anecdotes. I was very happy to sit down with Frans again to talk broadly about the motivations for his career choice, as well as his many years of experience in the field. While we focused on his new book, our discussion ranged far more broadly over the importance of primatology as a new and useful window on humans. I have had the privilege of sharing numerous stages with Frans, as well as hosting him at a previous Origins symposium, and each time I come away with important new perspectives. This podcast was no exception, and I hope you too will come away from it with a different view of yourself and your relationship to the world around you—which after all, is again one of the purposes of this podcast.

Speaking of new perspectives, I describe in the podcast how a video Frans showed me over a decade ago, involving Capuchin monkeys, as I recall, changed my own perspectives on occasions when I experience jealousy or envy, and I think it improved my own behavior, at least a little bit. Once you here him describe it, I wonder, if you then go to youtube and watch it, whether it will do the same for you. Either way, enjoy this entertaining, provocative, and informative discussion with a charming and insightful scientist.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

As I describe in the introduction to our discussion, I first learned about Janice Fiamengo by watching an incredible series of videos she produced called The Fiamengo Files. Not surprisingly, because they presented a well-reasoned approach to various hot-button social justice issues, these videos were taken down YouTube. No worries, like the proverbial Phoenix, The Fiamengo Files II emerged and can be found.

Janice, a retired Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, calls herself an anti-feminist, which may sound shrill or reactionary, but it is worth listening to her discussions to learn why she so labels herself. Most recently she has been working on a comprehensive history of Feminism and provides compelling arguments, based on data, that much of conventional wisdom regarding such things as universal suffrage and the plight of women currently misrepresents what actually transpired.

Whether or not you are inclined to agree with Janice, listening to her is enlightening, and it is also enriching. She is calm and charming, and anything but a firebrand, and I cannot imagine how one could have a non-cordial conversation with her. Nevertheless, she has been censored, and protesters have too often forced her public lectures to be cancelled. It is a great pity, because we need voices of reason to speak to each other if we are ever to rise above the partisan nonsense currently engulfing popular debate.

For that reason I was particularly excited that she agreed to come on the podcast to talk about these issues, her current projects, and her past work, including her book Sons of Feminism. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did, and are provoked to think about these issues in a new way, no matter what you might ultimately conclude. That is, once again, one of the purposes of the Origins Podcast, and of the Critical Mass website.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Richard Dawkins needs no introduction. He is one of the world’s most well known scientists and science writers. He is also a good friend and colleague. As many of you may know, Richard and I have toured much of the world together on stage, often in dialogues about our disciplines, our views of the world, and of course the conflict between science and religion.

When we decided to create The Origins Podcast, it was natural to consider early on having a dialogue between Richard and me. One fateful day, our crew headed to Oxford. As we began our journey, our car was broken into and much equipment stolen. Then we had a small car accident later. We finally got to Richard’s late in the day, in time to begin a dialogue, but not long enough to complete it.

I wanted to hold on to that snippet for the right time, so that Richard and I could continue our conversation by touching something new, something we had not talked about before onstage. The release of two new books over the past year provided just such an opportunity. Richard and I were able to discuss Flights of Fancy, his latest book, about flight in the animal kingdom and beyond. It is a beautiful book to read and look at, with delightful illustrations by Jana Lenzova.

I had assumed I knew everything that was in it, as Richard and I had talked about the physics of flying early on when he was writing it. But I was wrong. It is a wonderful compendium of fascinating stories about how nature, and evolution, conspired to harness physics to escape, at least temporarily, they tyranny of gravity.

We used the book as a launching point to discuss science more generally. It was an enjoyable tour from The Selfish Gene to his, and my, most recent thinking about nature. I hope you enjoy it.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Alex Garland is probably best known to the world for writing and directing the blockbuster film Ex Machina about the consequences of the coming of age of an AI humanoid robot. Before that, he wrote the film 28 days later, about the fictional aftermath of a mysterious incurable virus that spreads through the UK. Most recently he directed a television series for FX called Devs, about many things, but hinging on quantum mechanics and issues of a multiverse.

The human implications of new technology seem to play an ever present role in his films, and I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to chat with him about science and art in the past, and was eager to sit down and record a podcast. He is remarkably thoughtful and at the same time self-deprecating. Since the origins podcast tends to focus on issues of science and culture, Alex was the perfect guest, and he seamlessly blends the two. We sat down and talked about his own origins, emerging from a period of more or less complete disinterest in science to returning to the kind of questioning that his scientist grandfather used to embark on with him when he was a young boy. Recorded in the building in which his most recent TV series Devs was being recorded, we had to talk about the quantum universe as well.

It was a fascinating and thoughtful conversation about the human interface with modern science, as displayed in film, writing, and art.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

Geoff Marcy has been pioneer in the search for extra-solar system planets since the first discovery of an exoplanet surround a main sequence star was made in 1995 by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. Within months, Marcy and his team had not only confirmed this result but detected numerous other exoplanets. Seventy of the first one hundred exoplanets were discovered by Marcy’s team, including the firs exoplanet located as far away from its star as Jupiter is to the Sun, and the first exoplanet discovered by observing its transit of its host star, a technique that will be used by JWST to explore the atmosphere of exoplanets to search for bio signatures. Marcy was then a Co-PI on the Kepler Mission, which discovered over 4000 exoplanets. For their pioneering work in the creation of this new field Marcy and Mayor shared the international Shaw Prize in 2005. More recently Marcy has turned his attention to methods to probe for intelligent life in the Universe, first as a PI on the Breakthrough Listen Project, and more recently exploring novel methods, including optical techniques to probe for possible signals of intelligence elsewhere.

We discussed all of these exciting topics, as well as Geoff’s own origins as a scientist in a thoughtful and fascinating discussion. He has become well known not just as a world renown scientist, but as one of the best communicators of astronomy there is. Our discussion will give a whole new dimension to your thinking about that age-old question: Are we alone in the Universe?

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube channel as well.

Andy Knoll is a Renaissance Scientist. He is a geologist, paleobiologist, and geochemist and has applied key ideas from chemistry, biology, physiology and more to understanding the key developments associated with life on Earth—both how geology and chemistry have impacted on life, and vice versa. He has made ground breaking contributions to the understanding of almost every phase of life, from early Pre-Cambrian single cell life, to the emergence of more complex lifeforms, to mass extinctions. His group was the first to demonstrate that the rapid rise of CO2 was probably responsible for the last great extinction on Earth, a subject of some relevance today. For his work he most recently won the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Crafoord Prize in Geosciences… the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in that field.

But more than all of this, Andy is a wonderful teacher and human being, and a great communicator . He has written numerous books on the history of life on Earth, and we discussed his most recent book, “A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters” in this podcast, along with his own origins and evolution as a scientist. The discussion was so fascinating that we went overtime during our first session and had to continue the next day.

Our discussion will forever change your perspective on our planet, and our place within it. Enjoy.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

After writing the book, The Bell Curve, Charles Murray became a controversial figure in the US Social Science scene, and was much maligned in the public arena. His work has been misinterpreted as being racist and sexist, and at Middlebury College students forcibly stopped his guest lecture and rioted.

As often the case with stereotypes, Murray is instead a thoughtful scholar who has tried to base his social science research on data from empirical science, something that should be standard, but isn’t.

I wanted to discuss his most recent book, Human Diversity, with him. It is far from controversial, and instead is a clear effort to explain often complex genetic concepts in a popular format. He makes it clear that he focuses on only well understood and well accepted concepts, and the discussion we had was instructive and enjoyable. He is a delightful and thoughtful individual and I believe that comes out in our dialogue.

I know from experience, as I indicated at the beginning of our discussion, that many people will condemn the discussion without listening to it, just as they condemn his writing without reading it. But if you take the time, I think you will be pleasantly surprised, as well as learning some new things about the world.

One of the purposes of The Origins Podcast is to connect science and culture, and Murray connects hard science with social science issues in a refreshingly honest and detailed way. Indeed, if all social scientists and policy makers took his approach, the overall tenor of popular discussion would improve, I believe. And while Murray and I do not share political views on a number of issues, thoughtful discussion is far preferred to blanket cancellation and denunciation or a refusal to even engage. Again, that, I hope, is a hallmark of the podcast. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.

John Mather is an astrophysicist at NASA who has been involved in important space missions to probe our fundamental understanding of the Universe for over four decades. He helped lead the design and deployment of the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE), which launched in 1989 to probe the cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang with a precision that could not be obtained from terrestrial experiments because of absorption of radiation by the atmosphere. The experiments on COBE, and its successor missions WMAP and PLANCK, literally have turned cosmology from an art to a science, allowing the precise measurement of cosmological observables that previously were either not measured at all or only measured to within a factor of two. This has led to a golden age of cosmology, where theories of the early universe can now be compared directly to observation.

John directed the building of the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE which was able to show that the cosmic microwave background radiation was indeed an almost perfect ‘black body’ spectrum associated with a very well defined temperature of the Universe at a time of about 300,000 years after the big bang. Indeed, no terrestrial experiment has ever produced such an accurate black body spectrum, which was one of the fundamental predictions that helped develop quantum mechanics early in the 20th century.

For his work on COBE, John shared the Nobel Prize with George Smoot. But John didn’t rest on his laurels, for several decades after COBE John helped lead the design and development of the James Webb Space Telescope, which recently launched and will probe both the very early universe and also extra solar planets, possibly helping us discover evidence for life elsewhere in the Universe.

John and I talked about his origins in science, the science he has accomplished, and what his future plans are in a discussion that will help provide a valuable perspective for anyone on the current status of cosmology and astrophysics, as well as what we might learn in the future.

The ad-free video is available for all paid subscribers to Critical Mass in an adjoining post.. Video with ads will be available on the Podcast YouTube Channel, and audio is also available wherever you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!

I was very happy to have the chance to speak to Michael Shellenberger some time ago, after his book Apocalypse Never appeared. Having written my book, The Physics of Climate Change, I was intrigued by his take on the fact that climate change is not an existential threat. Once I read his book, I realized we agreed on many things, with perhaps the differences being on emphasize rather than substance. Nevertheless, we did have some disagreements, and we had a very spirited, and I hope respectful, discussion about climate change and its implications, but also on the other issues that need to be addressed and which climate change activists may be exacerbating because of their unique focus on this issue. The need to address important infrastructure issues in Africa and elsewhere in order to bring people up from poverty and also to help insulate them, or at least allow them to adapt to climate change is of great importance. Also, one of his central issues, the need for Nuclear Power, is an important issue, and I agree completely with Michael that we should not be closing down nuclear power plants, nor interfering with the construction of new plants. I don’t see Nuclear Power alone as a panacea, however. While perhaps largely due to the current burden of regulation, nuclear power plants are expensive and time consuming to build, and I think that they are just one component of what needs to be a many-pronged effort to address climate change and other global challenges.

Michael is incredibly passionate about his view of the crucial pressing challenges we face, and any categorization of him as liberal, conservative, libertarian, or climate denier, is false. He is a thoughtful humanist, and I found the discussion with him to be enlightening, as well as provocative, and I learned a lot in the process. That is the best kind of discussion, after all.

After doing 2.5 hours together a year or so we sat together again (on zoom) for another discussion in the midst of his current run for California Governor. This gave us a chance to reconnect, and also talk about a different, new set of issues more relevant to that race, and to current problems facing the country.

I hope you enjoy this two pronged episode. If you want to watch the episode Ad-Free, please purchase a paid subscription to Critical Mass.

Jonathan Rauch was 30 years ahead of the curve. In his book Kindly Inquisitors, written in 1993, he described the very mechanisms by which ideology can undermine both the search for truth, and the democratic ideal of free thought—mechanisms which have now become endemic in our society. But more than that, in that book, and in The Constitution of Knowledge, written in 2021 he lays out more clearly than anyone I have ever read, the philosophical and sociological basis of science. The search for truth, and the proper functioning of democratic government both require the same social contract: the implicit acceptance that all ideas are subject to open attack, but that ultimately when the community as a whole has access to open debate and discussion, to the logical attacks and counter-attacks, social consensus can emerge about which ideas remain productive, and which are consigned to the dustbin of history. Science is therefore a social activity every bit as much as governance is. This does not mean that science is a social construct however. It is precisely the need for open debate, without no constraints on whose claims have merit based on authority, gender, race, or religion, that ensures that the search for truth moves in the right direction.

It was a delight and revelation for me to learn, belatedly, about Jonathan’s writing, and to have a chance to discuss some of his ideas in depth in this podcast. He is a gentle, eloquent, and thoughtful soul, and I hope you find the discussion with him as enlightening as I did.

In 1979 Alan Guth, then a postdoc at Cornell, made what is perhaps the most important contribution to our theoretical understanding of the evolution of the Universe in the past half century. His realization that the early universe could have undergone a brief period of what he dubbed as “Inflation” provided the first and to date the only explanation of the large scale properties of the Universe compatible with observations, and based on well-defined, calculable, microphysical physics principles. Since that time, Inflation has become the paradigm of modern cosmology, and it made fundamental predictions about other observables in cosmology that have since been validated by observations of the Cosmo Microwave Background Radiation.

I was particularly happy to have Alan on the podcast for a variety of reasons. First and foremost he is a remarkably clear and precise expositor of science. Second, his own history in the field provides, I think, a good object lesson for young scientists who might be struggling. Third, it was important that he provide a counterpoint to the discussion I previously had with Roger Penrose, who has presented his own alternative to Inflation that is much less well-defined at this time. Finally, Alan is a lovely human being, and both a friend, and in some sense a mentor to me (having served on my thesis examination committee when he first came to MIT, and having been a colleague and co-author with me on scientific papers).

I hope you enjoy what I found to be a very enlightening discussion about science, and a revealing window into the thoughts of one of the most important cosmologists currently alive today.

The audio version is free to all on this Critical Mass site. An ad-free video is available on Critical mass for paid subscribers only, a video version with advertisements is available separately on the Origins Project Foundation YouTube Channel.

Dorian Abbot is an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, who uses mathematical and computational models to understand and explain fundamental problems in Earth and Planetary Sciences. His work on climate, and paleoclimate in particular is particularly important as we try and determine the likelihood that some exoplanets may be habitable. This is an area where may claims are made, most often on the basis of far too little solid evidence, so Dorian’s computer models have been particularly useful as we try and separate the wheat from the chaff in trying to determine if we are indeed alone in the Universe.

He and I discussed the evolution of climate on Earth, and the important features that may determine habitability elsewhere in the cosmos. And then we turned to an issue that has made his name far more recognizable outside of the scientific community.

Earlier this year, he was invited to give a named public lecture at MIT on climate, climate change, and exoplanet habitability. Previously, he and a colleague had written an unrelated op-ed piece in Newsweek that argued that “American universities are undergoing a profound transformation that threatens to derail their primary mission: “the production and dissemination of knowledge.” He laid the blame—as I and a number of my colleagues have independently also argued—on new "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" bloated bureaucracies at US universities that are stifling free speech, open inquiry, and merit based promotion.

As if to prove his point, under pressure from various social media complainants, MIT cancelled Abbot’s public lecture (which was later given online through a group at Princeton University). The subsequent uproar over the MIT cancellation has prompted many people to argue that it is time to rein in the current almost religious DEI proscriptions against open debate and discussion on these issues. Dorian and I discussed his experience, and ways to try and address this current problem with higher education.

I found the discussion provocative and enlightening. I hope you will too.

(The Origins Podcast will appear every other Thursday.)

Matt Ridley is a veteran journalist and science writer, with a training in genetics. He is also a Conservative member of the House of Lords in the UK. Matt and I were able to discuss his training, and his move from scientist to journalist, as well as the spectrum of his experiences in his various roles. We then moved on to the centerpiece of our dialogue: His newest book, Viral, written with geneticist Alina Chan. Together they produced what I view to be a masterpiece of science writing and detective work, exploring the origins of Covid-19. Our discussion, like the book, allowed us to illustrate a lot of the science related to the virus, and the current pandemic.

There are numerous surprises. One of the most remarkable was the realization that much of the important detective work uncovering the possible origin of the pandemic came from self-trained internet sleuths who were able to uncover masters theses, as well as online registries that had either not been referenced in the professional literature, or incorrectly referenced.

One comes away from the discussion with the realization that we still do not know for certain the origin of Covid-19, in spite of claims to the contrary. Recent, highly publicized scientific articles suggesting the Wuhan Seafood Market as the origin still have to deal with the fact that no direct evidence of the virus has yet to be uncovered from any of the animals at the market. At the same time, there is clear evidence that the Wuhan Virology Institute was working on Covid viruses, including viruses from bats that had caused Covid-like symptoms coming from a cave located far away in China.

Neither Ridley nor Chan advocate any particular scenario for the current outbreak. But it is clear that open, transparent discussion of the available evidence is very important if the world is to understand better how this pandemic started, and how to possibly head off, or prepare for the next one.

I found our discussion, and the book, incredibly informative, and Matt is a lucid and experienced explicator of both science, and social issues. I hope you enjoy the in-depth discussion we had in this, our most recent episode of The Origins Podcast.

Note that all future ad-free video podcasts will be available to paid subscribers only. The audio version will always be free to all, and a video version on Youtube will also always be available.

Summary: Roger Penrose and I discussed his life and work in science, mathematics, art and beyond, including the work for which he won the Nobel Prize, and his recent highly controversial proposal regarding the beginning and end of the Universe.

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Roger Penrose, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, for his 1965 theoretical demonstration that black holes are an inevitable consequence of Einstein’s General Relativity, something that hadn’t been widely accepted at that time, is known to his colleagues as a remarkable mathematical physicist, whose way of picturing things has changed the way we now picture many things. His use of what are called conformal diagrams, now called Penrose diagrams, allow us to intuitively picture processes in curved space, particularly around black holes in ways we couldn’t do otherwise. He also developed something called Penrose tiles, fill a two dimensional plane in a way that was previously thought to be impossible. He both inspired, and was inspired by the famous Dutch artist M. C. Escher, in his ‘impossible’ drawings. Most recently Roger has proposed an alternative picture of the evolution of the Universe called Cyclic Conformal Cosmology, which connects the distant past of the Universe with the far future. It is controversial, and few others have accepted his picture at this time. He and I spent almost 3 hours discussing all of these things, and also his early inspirations as a young man, the nature of mathematics and physics, and much more. I am extremely happy to release this episode with Roger Penrose as the first Substack-hosted episode of The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss. I hope you enjoy it, and all the future episodes to come.

This episode features a very special guest, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has an incredible life story and track record of speaking out against oppression, fighting for freedom of expression, and fostering a deeper discussion around some of today's most important topics.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, author, scholar, and former politician. She received international attention as a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, actively opposing forced marriage, honor killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. She has founded an organization for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali works for the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

In this episode of the Origins Podcast, Stephen Wolfram joins Lawrence Krauss for a fascinating conversation around Stephen's upbringing, his education path, Mathematica, and what he's working on now. They also cover various concepts around symbolic manipulation and the importance of knowing how to type.

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; the originator of the Wolfram Physics Project; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of more than four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.

On this episode of The Origins Podcast, experimental psychologist, Steven Pinker shares an excellent conversation with Lawrence Krauss. Steven and Lawrence cover a variety of topics, including rationality, evolutionary psychology, and language.

Tune in for an excellent conversation between Tim Minchin and Lawrence Krauss. They dive into a variety of interesting subjects, such as Tim Minchin's upbringing, his scientific interests, comedy, culture, the state of the world, and even a few of Tim Minchin's current projects that is he working on now.

This episode is best watched on Youtube, as there are slides and images that accompany Lawrence's talk. This week marks a very special moment in which the Origins Podcast passed 100,000 subscribers! In celebration of this, we've brought back Science Matters for a special episode to discuss the science of the James Webb Space Telescope. Thank you to everyone who has supported the Origins Project, both the podcast and the foundation as a whole. We have an excellent line-up of guests planned for 2022 and can't wait to share our newest episodes with you!

This exciting episode of the Origins Podcast features Jordan B Peterson along with host, Lawrence Krauss. They explore Jordan's upbringing and background, the nuances of meaning and value, as well as the difficulties and opportunities of doing research in our current cultural climate. Many viewers will enjoy seeing a unique side of Jordan B Peterson that shines through during this discussion and it is planned to be the first of many, so please consider subscribing and supporting the podcast to receive notifications of upcoming episodes!

Sabine Hossenfelder joins Lawrence Krauss for an interesting discussion about theoretical physics, academia, and the future of science ideology.

You can show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

Jim Simons joins Lawrence for fascinating new and different take on the life of a man best known to the public for becoming a billionaire by using techniques from mathematics and statistics to revolutionize investing, but who has had numerous other careers, as a brilliant mathematician, academic leader, code breaker and science philanthropist.

You can show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

This is the second part unique conversation with journalist and author, Heather Mac Donald. The author of The Diversity Delusion, Heather doesn't mince words. Lawrence and she don't agree on everything as you'll see during the podcast. Nonetheless, these conversations are critical in fostering an open dialogue as we try to come to a deeper understanding of the world around us.

You can show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Fry have a conversation about recent disconcerting news that several scientific publications and associations are self-censoring scientific publications and data for fear of offending people, even if no offense is intended.. something that concerns both of them, and should concern all of us.

Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

This is the first part unique conversation with journalist and author, Heather Mac Donald. Heather doesn't mince words, but Lawrence and she don't agree on everything as you'll see during the podcast. Nonetheless, these conversations are critical in fostering an open dialogue as we try to come to a deeper understanding of the world around us.

Stay tuned for the upcoming second part of this episode, where Lawrence and Heather revisit their earlier discussion for updates, clarifications, and further discussion around current events as they unfold.

You can show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

Listen to our newest mini-series "Current Events with Noam Chomsky"! In this episode, Lawrence and Noam have a follow-up discussion about the latest developments in Afghanistan.

Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

In this podcast episode, Lawrence Krauss reconnects with an old friend and Nobel Prize recipient, Barry Barish. They discuss a wide range of topics and explore Barry's own history as well as the history, present, and future of experimental physics.

Barry Barish is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves. In 2017, Barish was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves". In 2018, he joined the faculty at University of California, Riverside, becoming the university's second Nobel Prize winner on the faculty.

iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-origins-podcast/id1467481703

Website: https://www.originsprojectfoundation.org/

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The Origins Podcast, a production of The Origins Project Foundation, features in-depth conversations with some of the most interesting people in the world about the issues that impact all of us in the 21st century. Host, theoretical physicist, lecturer, and author, Lawrence M. Krauss, will be joined by guests from a wide range of fields, including science, the arts, and journalism. The topics discussed on The Origins Podcast reflect the full range of the human experience - exploring science and culture in a way that seeks to entertain, educate, and inspire.

Lawrence Krauss recently had the pleasure of sitting down with David Gross, one of the preeminent theoretical physicists who has been involved not just in the development of the theory of the strong interaction, called quantum chromodynamics, but he is also one of the founders and developers of String Theory. In their discussion, they explore the growth and changes of physics from the 1950's all the way to current day discoveries and methodologies.

Listen to our newest mini-series "Current Events with Noam Chomsky"! This episode covers a variety of topics around Refugees and Border Policies in the United States and other countries.

Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

Listen to our newest mini-series "Current Events with Noam Chomsky"! In this episode, Lawrence and Noam discuss a variety of issues around Afghanistan, including the withdrawal of troops, military leaders, and considering the opinions of Afghans when deciding US Military movements.

Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

Listen to our newest mini-series "Current Events with Noam Chomsky"! In this episode, Lawrence and Noam discuss a variety of issues around Iran, including nuclear weapons, sanctions, and diplomatic relations.

**Recorded before violence erupted in Israel and Gaza mid-May 2021**

Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast

Lawrence joins acclaimed film director Werner Herzog at his home in Los Angeles to discuss societal norms, consumerism, cancel culture, the colonization of Mars, the philosophy behind his art and films, and much more.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. 

And please consider supporting the podcast by donating to the Origins Project Foundation www.originsprojectfoundation.org

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Ian Tattersall (paleoanthropologist and curator emeritus of the American Museum of Natural History) joins Lawrence for a nuanced discussion of a wide range of topics including the rise of altruism in humans, the evolutionary reasons for religion, breeding compatibility between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, the origins of brewing beer, and more.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. 

And please consider supporting the podcast by donating to the Origins Project Foundation www.originsprojectfoundation.org

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Lawrence joins novelist Ian McEwan (Atonement, Machines Like Me) at his home in London to discuss a wide variety of topics ranging from storytelling and censorship to artificial intelligence and Brexit.  His latest book (The Cockroach) is a Kafkaesque, political satire in which a cockroach is transformed into the prime minister of England.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. 

And please consider supporting the podcast by donating to the Origins Project Foundation www.originsprojectfoundation.org

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2020 Nobel Prize-winning physicist and astronomer Andrea Ghez joins Lawrence to discuss her life in science and the path that led her to the discovery of a supermassive compact object (black hole) at the center of our galaxy.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. 

And please consider supporting the podcast by donating to the Origins Project Foundation www.originsprojectfoundation.org

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Lawrence joins Academy Award-winning filmmaker Woody Allen at his screening room in New York City where Allen shares insights on his career, philosophy, education, politics and the struggle to find meaning in the universe.  Allen’s latest memoir, Apropos of Nothing, is available now.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. 

The Origins Podcast is now a part of The Origins Project Foundation.  For more information, visit originsprojectfoundation.org .

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Website: https://theoriginspodcast.com

Lawrence joins neuroscientist and author Joseph LeDoux in his office at New York University to discuss human consciousness (including its evolutionary development), the difficulties of distinguishing behavior from emotions, his latest book The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains, and more.

The Origins Podcast is now a part of The Origins Project Foundation.  For more information, visit originsprojectfoundation.org

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. 

And please consider supporting the podcast by donating to the Origins Project Foundation www.originsprojectfoundation.org

Twitter: @TheOriginsPod
Instagram: @TheOriginsPod
Facebook: @TheOriginsPod
Website: https://theoriginspodcast.com

Lawrence joins human rights activist Maryam Namazie at her office in London to discuss her work with The Council of Ex-Muslims, the rise of fascism in the west, blasphemy, “safe spaces”, and more.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon release. 

The Origins Podcast is now a part of The Origins Project Foundation.  For more information, visit www.originsprojectfoundation.org .

Twitter: @TheOriginsPod
Instagram: @TheOriginsPod
Facebook: @TheOriginsPod
Website: https://theoriginspodcast.com

The incomparable Stephen Fry joins Lawrence to discuss topics ranging from Greek myths and language, to AI, technology, religion, politics, and mental health.

See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release.  And please consider supporting the podcast by donating to the Origins Project Foundation www.originsprojectfoundation.org

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Website: https://theoriginspodcast.com

Author and political commentator David Frum joins Lawrence to discuss Trump, US foreign policy, the challenges of a Carbon Tax, “wokeness”, behavior policing, and much more. 

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Known as “the Father of Synthetic Biology”, George Church is a geneticist, chemist and molecular engineer.  In this episode, Lawrence joins him in his office at Harvard Medical School to discuss his work with CRISPR, the differences between cultural and genetic evolution, the use of “smart materials” to battle climate change, and much more.

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Nobel Prize winning physicist Sheldon Glashow sits down with Lawrence to reflect on his life in science, the state of modern physics, and more.

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Lawrence discusses Shakespeare, education and science with the Tony award-winning director and former head of the Royal Shakespeare company Sir Trevor Nunn.

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In this episode, Lawrence is joined by award-winning cognitive psychologist and author Elizabeth Loftus to discuss her ground-breaking work on false memories, recovered memories, “the misinformation effect” and the unreliability of eye-witness testimony.

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Lawrence joins Shakespearean, historian, and Pulitzer Prize winning author Stephen Greenblatt to discuss renaissance thinking, the crossroads of science and literature, Adam and Eve, Trump and much more.

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In London, Lord Martin Rees joins Lawrence to discuss cosmology, science writing, politics, and the role of religion (and religious figures) in modern society.

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Lawrence joins astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson in his office at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City to discuss Neil’s background, science communication methods, creating the perfect science sound bite, and much more.

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Lawrence joins philosopher Anthony Grayling in his office at the New College of the Humanities in London.  Together, they discuss the Brexit crisis, Humanism as an alternative to religion, the current state of democracy around the world, and much more. (Note: This episode was recorded in April of 2019, prior to the appointment of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.)

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Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) joins Lawrence at the Origins Podcast studios for a wide-ranging and colorful discussion of topics including ethics, magic, climate change, Richard Feynman, The Amazing Randi, “artistic genius”, and much more.  

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Lawrence joins author and New York Times columnist Gail Collins to discuss her book When Everything Changed, which chronicles the progress of women’s rights in America from 1960 through today.  Gail Collins was the first woman to hold the position of Editorial Page Editor for the New York Times (from 2001 to 2007), where she currently provides a semi-weekly op-ed column.

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In this episode, Lawrence joins environmental scientist Dan Schrag at Harvard University to discuss Earth history, energy policies, and what we can expect from a future affected by climate change. 

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In this episode, Lawrence joins musician and astrophysicist Brian May at his studio in Surrey.  May, the lead guitarist of the legendary rock band Queen, recently served as a science team collaborator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond.  Together, they discuss the link between his interest in science and music, as well as his passion for stereoscopic photography.

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In this episode, Lawrence sits down with planetary scientist Alan Stern to discuss his new book Chasing New Horizons, which chronicles his work as head of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond.  Stern describes the trials and tribulations of a decades-long space mission, and he and Lawrence debate the future of manned space exploration, and much more.

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In this episode, Lawrence sits down in the offices of the New York Times with author and columnist Jennifer Finney Boylan. They discuss her life, novels, writing style, and the challenges facing transgender people in the world today.

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In this episode, Lawrence talks with public intellectual, linguist, and political activist Noam Chomsky. Together, they discuss topics ranging from American exceptionalism and foreign policy, to North Korea and Brazil, as well as free speech and Donald Trump.

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In this episode, Lawrence talks with actor, writer and comedian, Ricky Gervais about the science of comedy, the comedy of religion, and the religion of free speech. He also gets a mind-bending, personal science lesson from Lawrence.

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Welcome to The Origins Podcast! This brief introduction with host Lawrence M. Krauss provides a glimpse of what to expect from the upcoming show. The Origins Podcast features in-depth conversations with some of the most interesting people in the world about the issues that impact all of us in the 21st century. Host, theoretical physicist, lecturer, and author, Lawrence M. Krauss, will be joined by guests from a wide range of fields, including science, the arts, and journalism. The topics discussed on The Origins Podcast reflect the full range of the human experience - exploring science and culture in a way that seeks to entertain, educate, and inspire.