The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss
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160 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Ricky Gervais: Hall of Fame episode: Comedy, Philosophy, Religion and Science
26 maart 2025 · 1 uur 33 min
The Origins Podcast began with a bang, a Big Bang. Over the first month of our recording, we traveled to two continents, and 4 cities and recorded 16 episodes in 22 days. It was a whirlwind, and one of the most amazing experiences I can recall. While in London, we took advantage of the amazingly gracious acceptance by Ricky Gervais to appear on the podcast. It was a day I will always remember. Lees meer
Ricky had appeared in our film, The Unbelievers, which followed me and Richard Dawkins around the world. Gus and Luke Holwerda, who directed and filmed that movie helped create The Origins Podcast, and for the first year, filmed all the episodes. Ricky graciously agreed to appear in front of their cameras one more time, and joined us at what was then New College of Humanities, where I was a visiting Professor.
From the moment he arrived, it was clear it was going to be great. As he had been when we filmed The Unbelievers Ricky claimed to be nervous and was worried he would appear ignorant. He needn’t have worried. Maybe that is one of the reasons he is so good at what he does, because he worries about rising to the challenge.
We discussed his early life, his love of science, his early interest in biology and then philosophy, then the science of comedy, the comedy of religion, and the need for free speech. He then proceeded to demand a mind-bending, personal science lesson from me. It was amazing. He was amazing. Enjoy this, our first rebroadcast of a classic Origins Podcast Episode that is worth watching once again. 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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence
14 maart 2025 · 1 uur 22 min
The response to our first What’s New in Science has been very strong. What was not clear however, is that in this new series, Sabine Hosenfelder is my co-host, not my guest. As a result, we have changed things up a bit, and we are thrilled with the results. Both Sabine and I separately chose three science news items, and we alternated introducing them. After the introduction we had a spirited discussion about each. The topics included, the buzz around topological quantum computers, search for water on the moon, a new Google AI scientist, new optimistic models suggest a major ocean current may not be near its tipping point due to Climate change, searching for quantum fluctuations in space and time with interferometers, and the purported discovery of the very first stars in the Universe. We had a spirited discussion of these developments, and then topped it off with a discussion about a video that Sabine had posted that went viral, about the present and future of particle physics. Lees meer
Our discussion was exactly what I think is needed, and not present elsewhere on the internet, namely, in depth discussions of topics in the news where the details are fleshed out and the wheat separated from the chaff—no holds barred. In addition, the news is so topical that it changes between our recording, and the episode release. For example, on the day of our recording, a new private spacecraft had just successfully landed near the South Pole of the Moon to drill for evidence of water. We discussed why this is of interest, and it still is. However, the spacecraft isn’t. The day after our discussion it was announced that the spacecraft had since toppled over and its batteries had died. While this mission failed, the purpose of the mission remains important, and therefore the discussion we had can provide useful perspective to assess future mission claims.
We look forward to getting your feedback on our new format, and also encourage you to send us ideas for news items in our next podca…
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Elizabeth Weiss: Indigenous Myths and Cancel Culture vs Science in Anthropology
28 februari 2025 · 2 uur 25 min
Elizabeth Weiss's recent book, On the Warpath, chronicles her efforts to keep anthropology from falling prey to ideology, even as she curated a collection of ancient skeletons at San Jose State University. She and I had a chance to discuss her new book, and some of the ridiculous ways in which myth and superstition, and modern PC nonsense are intruding on the scientific study of humans and their ancestry. These included having a session the sex of skeletons being cancelled from a meeting of the American Anthropological Association because its leadership now insisted sex isn’t binary, and the fact that the American Museum of Natural History warns visitors that certain artifacts have powerful supernatural characteristics. Lees meer
Many of her efforts have been to fight inappropriate repatriation of ancient bones to groups whose genetic relationship to these distant hominid ancestors is tenuous at best. It was this that caused her to lose her curations position at her University and eventually to retire from academia.
It was a pleasure to talk common sense, and the importance of science for our understanding of the human condition with her. I hope you enjoy the 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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence
10 februari 2025 · 1 uur 2 min
“Science is the only News” -Steward Brand Lees meer
Steward Brand may have been exaggerating, but not by much. So Sabine Hossenfelder and I decided it is high time to take him at his word.
Sabine is one of the most watched science popularizers online, and a physicist I enjoy listening to and discussing science with. She is opinionated, as am I, and we don’t always agree, which makes things even more interesting. I am very happy that she has agree to collaborate on a new and exciting series for The Origins Podcast.
Once a month Sabine and I will pick 4-5 science stories that have been in the news, and discuss them. We will try and dispel hype, cut through confusion, and give a deeper context to stories that might otherwise simply end up as soundbites on major news networks. We agree on fundamentals, but we each have our own way of thinking about them.
What most people don’t realize is that science, including theoretical physics, is a social activity, with an active dialectic between scientists working at the forefront. Watch our real time discussions to get a sense of how different physicists approach outstanding problems, how we elaborate on them with each other, and how we sometimes differ on what approaches we think are likely to be fruitful.
Our first discussion both lively and illuminating, and got us off to a very good start for this new podcast segment that I high hopes for. From the recent hype about quantum computing and many worlds, to panspermia, commercial nuclear fusion, and the politics of climate change, hang on to your hats, and 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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substa…
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Jonathan Rauch:
5 februari 2025 · 2 uur 10 min
Jonathan Rauch is one of the clearest thinkers writing today about the philosophical and sociological interconnections between democracy and science, as detailed in his last book, The Constitution of Knowledge, about which we had a fascinating podcast discussion a year or two ago. When I heard his newest book was due to appear this month, I was eager to have him back on. Lees meer
This new book, Cross Purposes, Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy was released yesterday. It was a surprising take on the subject. Rauch is an atheist, a Jew, and homosexual, so one might have expected an attack on the failings of Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rauch argues that Christianity offers moral bases that mesh well with Madisonian democracy, and that it is necessary for the Christian community to tap into these if democracy in the US is to be resuscitated.
There is a lot to unpack there, and that is precisely what we did. He and I share atheist and Jewish roots, and we agree on many features of both philosophy and religion. But our perspectives on both the actual moral fabric of Christianity, and the extent to which society should give special treatment to religious teaching, and to what extent the positive aspects of Christian religious theology, including the theology of groups like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, means that we should respect that theology, differ.
Because I respect Rauch as a writer and a thinker so much, I thought it would be useful to take time to explore these differences, in order to ascertain to what extent his thesis was viable, and also to allow listeners access to a thoughtful and respectful discussion of to what extent Christian religious teachings have a key role to play in the moral framework of a healthy democratic society in the United States.
As always, the discussion was educational, and illuminating. It is an important issue at the current time, and I am very happy we could have a deeper dive into i…
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Cyan Banister: A master class in curiosity--Risk, Resilience and Betting on the Future
24 januari 2025 · 3 uur 28 min
As promised we are extremely excited to release our newest podcast, with acclaimed angel investor and silicon valley visionary, Cyan Banister. As I described in my last substack post, she is actually so much more. She found herself homeless in Northern Arizona at the age of 13, and undaunted, eventually became a self taught software engineer, and then moved on to become a legend in Silicon Valley. Lees meer
We did a deep dive into her origins, from her early childhood, through abandonment at 13, homelessness as a teenager, the key developments that led her to become a self-taught software engineer, and eventually to have the opportunity to become an angel investor, leading her to become among the first investors in SpaceX, Uber, and many more companies, and then to her thoughts about nature, technology and the future. It was a remarkable discussion with a remarkable individual. Cyan defies any stereotype and we are very pleased that she regarded our 3.5 hr discussion as the most comprehensive and enlightening podcast she has done. We even made several discoveries together about how developments when she was young affected her approach to business and life today, and also how what she views as her purposes in life perhaps reflect key gifts that helped raise her up in her own story. And, in the true spirit of connecting science and culture that is at the heart of the Origins Podcast, we also explored how she actually approaches both life and business with a true scientific attitude—exploring, experimenting, letting nature and experience guide her, and a willingness to change her mind.
Everyone who has heard anything about Cyan’s story has been inspired. We feel that our dialogue, which takes her story to a whole new level, will touch anyone who has faced what seem to be insurmountable challenges, and inspire people to think more creatively about their own futures, and how what we can do to help people better achieve their aspirations, and of course better address the challen…
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Jennifer Doudna: Scientist and World Changer
15 januari 2025 · 1 uur 27 min
Jennifer Doudna changed the world. She didn’t do it intentionally. She pursued her curiosity about the structure and functioning of RNA as a research scientist, one who had been trained by some of the most impactful geneticists at the time, including two Nobel laureates. In the process, however, she and her collaborators discovered a genetic tool that has dwarfed all others for its potential to change both the human condition, but also what it may mean to be human. I am referring of course to CRISPR, the tool that Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier helped develop and for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. Lees meer
In our in-depth conversation we covered the scientific origins of Jennifer’s discoveries, and some of their possible implications. In a time when there is a misplaced notion that support for scientific research needs to be applied directly for certain goal-oriented activities, it is refreshing to have such a clear example of the benefits of fundamental research for our society, along with the need to prepare our minds for the possibilities of the future. It is exactly what the Origins Podcast, and the Origins Project Foundation are designed to highlight—the joy, benefits, and challenges of human intellectual inquiry for our society and our future. It was a pleasure and privilege to spend 90 minutes discussing these issues with this world-renowned biochemist and advocate for science.
Our conversation was both a tutorial about modern genetics, and also an opportunity to discuss issues that society as a whole will have address as we come to grips with the new power of science in this century. With great power comes great responsibility, and I hope discussions such as the one I had with Jennifer will provoke and enlighten. 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 a…
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A Hitchmas Gift For All -Audio Version
25 december 2024 · 1 uur 39 min
A year ago, John Richards the head of the Atheist UK approached me about the idea of celebrating Christopher Hitchens with a Hitchmas event, near Christmas, and on or about the anniversary of Christopher’s death, on Dec 15, 2011. I realized that to do it right would require time and organization, and the proper panelists. I was thrilled that Christopher’s friends and mine, Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins, and Douglas Murray agreed to be part of the event, and that the HowTo Academy, which organizes wonderful events in London, several of which I had done before, agreed to coordinate the logistics with The Origins Project Foundation. A year later, the sold-out event happened, and we decided in advance to record it appropriately, with 5 cameras, and to have Gus and Luke Holwerda, who directed and filmed The Unbelievers, and with whom I began The Origins Podcast, edit the final product. Lees meer
As a special Holiday gift, we are making the advert free video version available to both paid and free subscribers here on Critical Mass. This post has the audio version for those who prefer that. If you want to watch the video, open the other Critical Mass post we are releasing this morning. Our YouTube channel will also host the video, and I encourage you to subscribe to that channel as well if you wish. No matter how you watch it, or listen to it (we will make the audio available on iTunes etc), we hope you find this set of reminiscences and the ensuing discussion a wonderful reminder of a remarkable man, and that it inspires you as much as Christopher inspired us. Happy Holidays to you all.
Lawrence M. Krauss
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Jeffrey Sachs on Diplomacy, Conflict, and the Path to Peace
18 december 2024 · 2 uur 1 min
I had the privilege of welcoming my friend Jeffrey Sachs back to the podcast. Jeffrey joined me earlier this year, and given the unfolding crises around the world, I thought it was a good time to sit down again and talk current events. I expect our conversation will generate disagreements from many listeners. Open discussion of sensitive issues however is important and one of the things that both Critical Mass and The Origins Project Foundation defend and promote. Lees meer
Jeffrey is one of the most incisive thinkers I know. His career has spanned academia, global governance, and public advocacy, and his work has had a profound impact on economics and diplomacy. As one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history, he established himself as a brilliant scholar early on. But he didn’t stay confined to academia. For nearly two decades, he was a senior advisor to the UN Secretary-General, tackling some of the world’s most complex challenges.
Our conversation this time focused on two hot-button topics dominating headlines: Ukraine and Gaza. On Ukraine, Jeffrey traces the roots of the conflict back to the U.S.’s decision to expand NATO eastward—a move he argues broke assurances given to Russia in the early 1990s. He described how this decision sowed mistrust and led to today’s crisis. Jeffrey believes diplomacy is the only viable solution and floated a bold idea: a direct negotiation brokered by none other than Donald Trump, to secure Ukraine’s neutrality and end the bloodshed. I presented to him the concerns of a Ukrainian journalist who has asked me to present Jeffrey with various questions. the concern that a diplomatic solution will embolden Russia to more dramatic land grabs is certainly real in the Ukraine.
On Gaza, Jeffrey’s criticism was equally sharp. He views the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians in the occupied territories as untenable and unjust, likening them to apartheid. He insists that a two-state solution, grounded in international l…
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Nicholas Christakis: From Social Networks to AI, Special Thanksgiving Podcast
28 november 2024 · 2 uur 52 min
Nicholas Christakis is a Renaissance Man, with whom I have wanted to have a conversation for some time. There was so much to talk about with him, and each item was so fascinating, that we barely scratched the surface, even in the lengthy discussion we had. This is a great Thanksgiving Day listen.. instead of football games! One can get a sense of the breadth of his activities by considering his positions at Yale University. He is Sterling Professor (the highest endowed chair at Yale) of Social and Natural History, as well as Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science, and Professor in the Departments of Statistics, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and in the School of Management! Lees meer
Nicholas’ personal history is almost as fascinating as his academic accomplishments. Born in New Haven to parents who were graduate students at Yale (his father was a student of the notorious Gregory Breit, about whom I heard many stories when years later I became a Professor in that same department, and his mother was a graduate student of Nobel Laureate Lars Onsager), he moved back to Greece when his father had to return for military service, so Nicholas’s first language was Greek. His parents moved back to the US several years later, and Nicholas grew up in the US, returning to Yale University to study biology. All throughout his childhood he grew up under the shadow of his mother’s fatal illness, and he and his brothers all became doctor’s in response. But while in medical school, the bug for scientific research caused him to pursue both a Masters degree in Public Health and eventually a PhD in Sociology.
Moving to the University of Chicago, Nicholas focused on caring for dying patients, and exploring how their partnerships affected their health as well as that of their partners. This began an eventual transition to studying not pairs of individuals, but networks of human beings. His laboratory has done groundbreaking experimental work study…
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Charles Moxley Jr: Nuclear Weapons are Illegal
4 november 2024 · 1 uur 35 min
Charles Moxley Jr has spent over 35 years as a litigator in New York, in large and complex commercial, securities, insurance and other cases throughout the United States. He is perhaps the last person one might imagine could bring about the end of a continually proliferating international presence of nuclear weapons. Yet personages as eminent as the late Robert S. McNamara, and Cyrus Vance, as well as nuclear security expert physicist Kosta Tsipis think he might have hit a promising line of attack to quell an ever growing international arsenal of nuclear weapons threatening just just world peace but civilization itself. Lees meer
Moxley analyzes the question in light of the July 1996 opinion issued by the International Court of Justice, as well as the law as articulated by the United States itself. Using generally recognized facts as to the characteristics and effects of nuclear weapons Moxley Jr concludes that the use of nuclear weapons is "per se" unlawful.
To back up his arguments Moxley Jr wrote a comprehensive treatise, in excess of 800 pages, to examine both the International Court of Justice’s perspective, and also the legal claims made by the United States, in light of the known characteristics of nuclear weapons. His book, which took 10 years to produce in its first edition, was reviewed by major figures in the field, has recently been updated, and released as a two-volume set. It was the new release of these books that prompted our conversation.
In our discussion we unpacked and clarified the various legal issues, as well as the rather strange and one might say absurd position of the United States regarding the effectiveness of their own nuclear weapons arsenal. The result is what can be a clear primer that can add a new perspective regarding the sanity of a world where over 10,000 nuclear weapons exist, with over 2000 such weapons kept on hair trigger alert, and perhaps encourage your own activism in this regard. At the very least it will reveal the remarkable …
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Heather Mac Donald: When Race Trumps Merit and Reshapes Culture
5 oktober 2024 · 2 uur 18 min
Heather Mac Donald is never one to back down from controversy, and that’s exactly what makes our discussions so engaging. She’s sharp, opinionated, and unflinching when it comes to tackling issues many prefer to avoid—whether it’s race, culture, or the idea of meritocracy in modern society. This is the third conversation Heather and I have had for the show. With the release of her new book, When Race Trumps Merit, it felt like the perfect time to bring her back to explore how the focus on race and identity politics is reshaping standards across academia, the arts, and medicine. Lees meer
Of course, Heather and I don’t always see eye to eye. Throughout this episode, you’ll hear us wrestle with some points from very different perspectives. But that’s what makes these conversations so worthwhile. Origins isn’t just about interviews; it’s about true dialogue—exchanges where ideas are challenged, examined, and questioned from all angles.
In our discussion, we span a wide range of topics, from Heather’s background in classical literature to the current culture wars affecting our institutions. And while our differences come through, it’s these disagreements that add depth and substance to the conversation. Especially now, when polarization is at an all-time high, having open, respectful dialogues is more important than ever.
Whether you find yourself agreeing with Heather or not, I hope this discussion will inspire you to think more critically, challenge assumptions, and look more deeply at the issues shaping our culture today.
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Saul Perlmutter: Third Millennium Thinking
18 september 2024 · 2 uur 26 min
Saul Permutter won the Nobel Prize for his eventual role in the discovery of dark energy. In 1996 when I was lecturing at LBL he bet me that he would show dark energy didn't exist. His group had been measuring supernova distances for years, in hopes of determining the deceleration rate of the universe. Instead, after recalibrating some of his earlier data, his group and an independent group discovered the universe was actually accelerating. Lees meer
That is the beauty of science, it supersedes any individual prejudices, and scientists actually change their minds if the data requires it. This is one of the many important characteristics of science that Saul and his collaborators discuss in their recent book, Third Millennium Thinking. It is a good read, full of useful examples about how scientific thinking is important in the world beyond just science.
Saul and I had a lively conversation about science, the scientific method, and his own experiences as a scientists. It was an enriching and enlightening discussion, and 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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Origins Podcast: A Call For Support To Save A Family
9 september 2024 · 25 min
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING NOW TO SAVE THIS FAMILY! Lees meer
There are many tragedies in Afghanistan, and thousands of people who need help. We cannot right all the wrongs, but we can save these 8 people. We can save a woman who fought for human rights and now faces execution in Afghanistan if she were to return. We can save 5 young girls who have no access to education, or freedom if they were to return to Afghanistan. Already, during the past 2 years in Afghanistan, they have learned much English, and one of the young girls has been selected for a prestigious online scholarship to study at an English speaking Afghan University now run outside of that country. We can do something concrete and positive to help them.
It isn’t everything, but it is something. I can tell you from my last experience of saving the life of a young girl from Afghanistan so she could study in the United States and eventually pursue and advanced degree that not a day goes by when I don’t think about how that feels to me like one of the most important things I have done.
I hope you will consider donating, and if you cannot, that you will pass this podcast along to others who may be interested.
DONATIONS:
The JIAS has kindly created two different direct PayPal donation links.
* The first is specifically linked to the family, and if for some horrible reason the family were not able to arrive in Canada under this program, all funds would be returned to donors. Because the funding relates to this family uniquely, any donations made to this site are not tax deductible for Canadian residents. This is the preferred site for all those who are not concerned about receiving a Canadian tax receipt for their donations.
Here is the direct link: https://www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=VBKBGBFZ5G5FE
* The second is a link to a fund which will provide for the family if they arrive, but if for some reason they cannot arrive, the funds will not be returned but will be allocated to others on the sponsor’s waiti…
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Helen Pluckrose
4 september 2024 · 2 uur 29 min
Helen Pluckrose has been a formidable voice in the cultural and intellectual debates surrounding critical social justice, liberalism, and free speech. I've admired her work for some time, particularly her rigorous analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of these movements. In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Helen about her new book, "The Counterweight Handbook," which offers practical strategies for those navigating the challenges posed by critical social justice ideologies in the workplace and beyond. Lees meer
As with all Origins Podcasts, we spent some time learning about Helen’s own origins, which are just as compelling as her work. From her early years, where she balanced a career in care with a passion for English literature, to her later involvement in the Grievance Studies Affair, which exposed the weaknesses in certain academic fields, Helen has consistently demonstrated a concern for the wellbeing of others and a commitment to liberal values and intellectual honesty.
In our discussion, we covered the origins and evolution of critical social justice, the impact of postmodern thought on modern social theories, and the ongoing challenges of promoting free speech in an increasingly polarized world. Helen shared insights from her work with Counterweight, an organization she founded to support individuals facing ideological pressure in their professional lives. We worked through her new book, which provides remarkably useful guides for dealing with challenges that misplaced critical social justice pressures might impose upon you in the workplace and elsewhere.
This conversation was both enlightening and engaging. It offers valuable perspectives for anyone interested in the intersection of culture, politics, and philosophy. Helen is a wonderfully clear thinker, a sympathetic presence and a powerful advocate for the principles of liberalism, and it was a pleasure to spend time discussing her work and writing. I hope you find this episode as insight…
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Solving one of cosmology's biggest conundrums with Wendy Freedman
21 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 57 min
Wendy Freedman, the former director of the Carnegie Observatories and now distinguished professor at University of Chicago, has been a leading figure in observational cosmology and astronomy for over 30 years. I have known her as a friend and colleague, and have learned much from her over the years, and was very excited to be able to snag her amidst her busy schedule to record a podcast a week or two before the release of a new blockbuster result her team had produced. I am very happy that Critical Mass listeners will be among the first to get the detailed lowdown on the likely resolution of a problem that has been plaguing cosmology for the past decade. Lees meer
In the 1990’s Wendy led a major international team of astronomers in carrying the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was named in part because of this project, to establish the distance scale of the universe and measure its current expansion rate, a quantity not coincidentally called the Hubble Constant, first measured by Edwin Hubble in 1929.
Since that time, different groups have measured this most important single observable in our universe and gotten widely different values. In the 1980’s and early 90’s two different groups got values that differed by a factor of 2, even though each claimed errors of less than 10%. In 2001, Freedman’s team published their result, truly accurate to 10%, and the value, perhaps not surprisingly, fell right in the middle between the previous two discrepant values.
All was good, until inferences based on the Cosmic Microwave Background, the most precise observable in modern cosmology suggested that measurements at a time when the universe was 300,000 years old, when extrapolated forward using the best current theory of cosmology today, would give a value that different from the HST value.
The difference was statistically significant, and as time proceeded, and error bars got smaller, the discrepancy between the HST (and then the James Web Space …
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Leonard Susskind: Strings, Quarks, Black Holes, and More.
7 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 55 min
I was very happy to finally have the opportunity to have an extended conversation for our podcast with renowned theoretical physicist Lenny Susskind. Lenny has been a friend and colleague for many years. I remember first attending a lecture he gave at a conference when I was an undergraduate and recognizing what a powerful intellect he was, and also how he combined mathematical sophistication within an intuitive framework that reminded me a bit of Richard Feynman. Years later, when I went jogging with him along a beach in California, I also discovered that, he strove for excellence in everything he did, and it nearly killed me to keep up with him. Lees meer
Lenny has been involved over the past 50 years in many of the forefront developments in particle physics, including string theory, the standard model, the matter-antimatter symmetry of the universe, and the mysteries of black hole physics and quantum gravity, to name just a few. It was enlightening to explore his own intellectual development, and also his perspectives on how these major developments in physics fit into our evolving understanding of the universe.
Lenny is also an accomplished popularizer of science, something he turned to somewhat late in his career, and I learned something fascinating about what caused him to turn to writing. It was entirely unexpected. I am glad he was motivated, because his semi-popular books following The Theoretical Minimum, covering the essential ideas necessary for someone to have a grasp of modern theoretical physics, are, in my opinion classics.
Anyone who is interested in understanding how we got to where we are today, and what the key outstanding questions in theoretical physics are, and where the likely answers may be found, will find our discussion enlightening, and, fascinating. I hope you enjoy this in depth discussion with one of the most accomplished theorists around today, and one of the most enjoyable and thought provoking scientists one might hope to have a conversat…
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Werner Herzog
24 juli 2024 · 1 uur 45 min
This is my second dialogue with filmmaker extraordinaire and force of nature, Werner Herzog. But after I read his amazing new memoire Every Man for Himself, and God Against All, which takes its name for the German title of his 1974 film The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, I had to have Werner back. Lees meer
I have known Werner for almost 20 years. We met when I was a judge at Sundance and we gave his film Grizzly Man an award, and Werner, his wife Lena, and I have been fast friends ever since. He even allowed me to be a villain in the movie Salt and Fire, which we shot in Bolivia with Michael Shannon and Veronica Ferres. So, after all of this time I thought I really had a good handle on him. I was wrong.
So many people ask me about Werner, who has a reputation of being larger than life, and I always say what a kind, generous, pleasant man he is. All of that is true, but after reading his new autobiography, I realize that he IS larger than life!!
If it weren’t Werner, I would never believe all of the amazing stories and events. That he is still alive is alone almost a miracle. For this dialogue I decided that rather than following his story chronologically, I would read him various quotes from the book and ask him to elaborate. What followed was a rollicking conversation that is one of the most amazing I have recorded to date, and that I think presents Werner has perhaps few other interviews ever had. In the process we covered territory from science to philosophy to history to religion and beyond. And in the end, what arose most clearly from our discussion was that while he is a world famous filmmaker, what he really is at heart, is a poet. And we are all lucky to have him. 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 vid…
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Annie Jacobsen
10 juli 2024 · 1 uur 30 min
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. Lees meer
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 year…
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Mysteries of the Cosmos, From Dark Energy to the Big Bang: A State of the Universe report with Michael Turner
26 juni 2024 · 1 uur 57 min
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. Lees meer
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 …
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Jeffrey Sachs: Economics, Conflict, and Real-World Diplomacy
12 juni 2024 · 1 uur 22 min
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. Lees meer
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)…
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Mark Mattson: Building the Brain: Glutamate as Sculpture and Destroyer
29 mei 2024 · 2 uur 11 min
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. Lees meer
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 …
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Charles Duhigg: The Art and Science of Communication
15 mei 2024 · 1 uur 6 min
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. Lees meer
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 j…
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From Quarks to Galaxies: A tour through the forefront of modern physics with Frank Wilczek
23 april 2024 · 3 uur 55 min
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. Lees meer
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 t…
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(Audio) Katherine Brodsky: Speaking Out in an Age of Outrage
31 maart 2024 · 2 uur 23 min
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. Lees meer
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 …
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A Conversation with Irwin Shapiro: Scientist Extraordinaire from the Earth to the Stars, and at 94, still going strong.
16 maart 2024 · 1 uur 57 min
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. Lees meer
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 …
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A Dialogue with Label-Defying Journalist Jonathan Kay
16 februari 2024 · 2 uur 49 min
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. Lees meer
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…
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A dialogue with Brian Keating, at the San Diego Air and Space Museum
2 februari 2024 · 1 uur 22 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Greg Lukianoff: : The Canceling of the American Mind. Free Speech and Academia
28 december 2023 · 1 uur 58 min
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. Lees meer
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 misun…
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Scott Aaronson: From Quantum Computing to AI Safety
16 december 2023 · 3 uur 2 min
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. Lees meer
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 Y…
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Dialogues with Richard Dawkins
30 november 2023 · 1 uur 20 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Carlo Rovelli: From Dante to White Holes
3 november 2023 · 2 uur 24 min
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. Lees meer
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. Second…
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Robert Sapolsky: The Illusion of Free Will
18 oktober 2023 · 2 uur 59 min
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. Lees meer
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 s…
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Peter Singer: From Animal Liberation to Effective Altruism
7 oktober 2023 · 2 uur 19 min
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. Lees meer
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 gatheri…
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Hakeem Oluseyi: An unexpected life in Science, and unpopular truths
20 september 2023 · 2 uur 37 min
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. Lees meer
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 supp…
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The Best of the Origins Podcast, Part 1:
1 september 2023 · 3 uur 11 min
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. Lees meer
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!
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Bart Ehrman: Revelations about Revelation...and more
8 juli 2023 · 2 uur 10 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencek…
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Martin Rees: If Science is to Save Us, Part 2
9 juni 2023 · 1 uur 46 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Douglas Murray: From Poetry to Free Speech
27 mei 2023 · 3 uur 7 min
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. Lees meer
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…
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Andrei Linde: Inflation, Multiverses, and all that, from Mr. Eternal Inflation
14 mei 2023 · 3 uur 1 min
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. Lees meer
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 …
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Boldly going where no podcast has gone before: William Shatner; Wonder, Awe, and Questions, Questions...
28 april 2023 · 1 uur 35 min
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. Lees meer
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 de…
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Martin Rees: If Science is to Save Us, Part 1
12 april 2023 · 1 uur 54 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Onstage at the Orpheum Theater, Nov 15, 2022
9 maart 2023 · 1 uur 32 min
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. Lees meer
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…
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John Preskill: From the Early Universe to the Future of Quantum Computing
17 februari 2023 · 2 uur 14 min
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. Lees meer
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-prof…
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Tim Palmer: The Primacy of Doubt
4 februari 2023 · 2 uur 11 min
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. Lees meer
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 un…
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Elizabeth Kolbert: Can human technology solve unintended consequences of human technology
14 januari 2023 · 2 uur 19 min
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.) Lees meer
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,…
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Holiday Edition Part 2, Science Matters: How the Universe Made your Holiday Gifts
29 december 2022 · 31 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
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Origins Podcast Wishful-Thinking Holiday Edition Part 1: A Dialogue with Augusten Burroughs: A Witch or Not A Witch
25 december 2022 · 2 uur 6 min
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. Lees meer
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,…
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An Origins Podcast EXCLUSIVE: A Dialogue with Cormac McCarthy About Science, on the occasion of his newest book releases
9 december 2022 · 1 uur 5 min
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. Lees meer
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 i…
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Brian Keating: Probing the Early Universe and Communicating about Science
29 november 2022 · 1 uur 56 min
Find Brian’s INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/39UaHlB and on Spotify here spoti.fi/3vpfXok Lees meer
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 site…