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PODCAST

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss

Lawrence M. Krauss

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

science physics

All Episodes

65:54

What's New in Science with Sabine and Lawrence | AI...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/09/23

There has been a lot of doom and gloom combined with excitement, if that is possible, about AI in the science news lately. Sabine and I tried to deconstruct the hype associated with the highly touted Open AI solution of one of the Millennium Problems in Mathematics, as well as explore the real concerns and imaginary concerns associated with both the recent Open AI agent hacking of Huggy Face, and the blog post by the CEO of Anthopic arguing for a pause in AI development because of the potential for

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145:03

Searching for Aliens. The Wrong Way? A dialogue with...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/09/08

John Gertz is a Renaissance Man. One might think that the President of Zorro Productions might be the last person to talk with about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and the last person to chair SETI’s governing board. But as is clear from our discussion, and from the material in his recent book, Reinventing SETI, John has not only mastered all of the relevant technical issues, he has thought deeply about the motivation for SETI, and the likelihood of its success. Treating the

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81:01

Physics for Everyone, Lecture 4. The Beating Heart of...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/08/18

This lecture, recorded before lecture 5, which was released a month ago, actually more naturally follows it, which is why releasing it after lecture 5, while unintended, actually makes sense. In the last lecture I described the most important unification in all of physics, the unification of electricity and magnetism, a unification into electromagnetism by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century. Because of its elegance, and its overpowering utility, the theory of electromagnetism has provided

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59:52

What's New in Science with Sabine and Lawrence |...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/08/03

Happy August! . Heading back to North America as we just concluded our Origin Project Adventure to Cyrpus and Greece, where we felt the heat, and avoided some wildfires while having some amazing positive experiences as well with an amazing group of 26 travelers. Please stay safe and try and stay cool this month. To help distract you from the heat, I hope you will enjoy this latest conversation about new discoveries in science with Sabine Hossenfelder. As always, we try and deconstruct the facts

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23:13

Saving a Family from Afghanistan

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/07/29

I remember when my friend, journalist Claire Berlinski, first contacted me about a tragic situation regarding a family trapped in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. She knew that I had helped a young girl interested in physics escape to the US to study years earlier and hoped that I might assist in this case. If ever one imagined a family appropriate to bring to safety, this would be the one. The mother was a women’s rights lawyer before the takeover, and the husband worked for a French firm

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114:56

Physics for Everyone, Lecture 5: The Unification that...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/07/07

I began this lecture by saying I was daunted by what I was about to talk about. There are several reasons for this. First, I will lead you through the development of what was certainly most important theoretical development in the 19th century, and what could easily be considered the most important mathematical framework in all of physics. Second, this development affected our modern picture of the universe more than almost any other. Next, this development made our modern technological society

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72:02

What's New in Science | Cosmic Surprises, Newton...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/06/09

I think this was one of my most enjoyable dialogues in our What’s new series. Maybe Sabine and I are getting more used to each other’s cadence and interests or maybe it was the subject matter. Either way, I think you will find this to be a fascinating and provocative discussion of science at the forefront, and at the not-so-forefront, because that science is interesting too!We began our discussion describing a new finding of a Giant Ring of galaxies billions of light years across in the sky. The

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101:48

Alvin Roth: Moral Economics, from Prostitution to...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/05/12

Alvin Roth is a Nobel Prizewinning Economist whose work on designing markets has had real world impacts that may have saved thousands of lives around the world, while arousing strong emotions both for and against the programs he has helped put in place. Clearly not one to shy away from controversy, he represents the best of what The Origins Project is trying to promote: applying science and reason to public policy. In short, connecting science and culture!Roth’s new book, which is fantastic, and

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67:33

What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence |...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/04/24

I’m back with my friend and colleague Sabine Hossenfelder for another episode of “What’s New in Science”. Spending time with Sabine was a nice chance to step away from my physics lecture series for a bit. I know many of you have been enjoying the lectures, so don’t worry, they’ll be back soon.In this episode, we covered an incredibly wide range of science topics. Sabine opened with reported claim that the CIA used quantum magnetometry to find the downed pilot in Iran. The report, in the NY Post,

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63:21

Physics for Everyone, Lecture 3: Motion, from Galileo...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/04/14

We usually begin the study of physics with a discussion of motion, not because it is easy, or because the modern understanding of motion began with Galileo hundreds of years ago. Rather, Galileo’s groundbreaking work provides a paradigm to understand how physics is done today. Extracting out the fundamental essence of motion from all the distractions associated with what turn out to be irrelevant complexities was a monumental intellectual leap for humankind—a leap we often take for granted.

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130:53

Katie Herzog: The Science Behind Drinking To Get Sober

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/03/23

Alcoholism is a scourge on modern society. Every year, 178,000 American die from alcohol abuse, and it has been estimated that over 200 billion dollars is lost from the US economy due to alcoholism, includingcosts of health care, lost productivity, and costs of crime enforcement. Given this immense social cost, it is equally amazing that there is no widely accepted cure. Rather, alcoholics are told they need to abstain from taking a single drink for the rest of their lives, or they are likely to

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58:25

What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence |...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/02/13

I’m back with my friend and colleague Sabine Hossenfelder for another episode of “What’s New in Science”. I think this is one of my favorite dialogues that we have had. Spending time with Sabine was a nice chance to step away from my physics lecture series for a bit. I know many of you have been enjoying the lectures, so don’t worry, they’ll be back soon. In this episode, we covered the kind of science news I like best: ideas you can argue about and results that make you recalibrate. Sabine opened

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56:22

Physics for Everyone, Lecture 2: The Gestalt of...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2026/01/22

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke put it. In that spirit, the way we get closest to “magic” in physics is not by memorizing more facts or equations, but by learning a few mental tools that help us see through the illusion of complexity by extracting the wheat from the chaff. They are all simple at heart, but nevertheless quite powerful, and they form the core of what I call the Gestalt of Physics—the worldview that governs how physicists

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53:36

What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence| New...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/12/31

New Year’s Eve always comes with that familiar urge to clean the slate, toss out what didn’t hold up, and keep what actually earned its place. That’s basically the spirit of our latest “What’s New in Science” episode with Sabine Hossenfelder.We began with the season’s favorite shiny object: wormholes. The headlines have been everywhere, but we talked through why most of these stories quietly slide from “a speculative tool in a model” to “a virtual phenomenon that might be useful in calculations.”

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145:23

The Like Button, and the Strange Power of Tiny Ideas...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/12/22

On this week’s episode of The Origins Podcast, I ended up in a place I genuinely never expected to go: the humble “like” button. When the idea first landed in my inbox, my reaction was basically, why on Earth would anyone write a whole book about that? Then I spoke with Martin Reeves, and I discovered that the history of this tiny icon is a surprisingly rich window into innovation, entrepreneurship, human psychology, and the modern attention economy.Martin is a senior figure at BCG’s Henderson

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132:27

Polarization, Powerlessness, and what We can Actually Do

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/11/29

On this week’s episode of The Origins Podcast, I am excited to release a conversation that has been sitting in our archives for more than a year. When we first recorded this discussion with conflict mediator and systems thinker Diana McLain Smith, political polarization was already a significant national and international problem. It has only gotten worse.The world seems more tribal than ever, and there is constant pressure to have to pick a side in every argument and not listen to any different

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63:38

Announcing our new 12-part series: A dozen Lessons on...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/11/23

I am thrilled to introduce a significant new segment for the Origins Podcast. We are producing a fully fledged 12-part series titled “A Dozen Lessons on Physics and Reality.” Over the coming months, we will release these lectures to provide a comprehensive guide to how physicists think about the world. I’m particularly excited to share the wonder and insights that are often lost in standard textbook descriptions, while giving more detail than one might obtain in a standard 1 hour physics lecture.

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124:54

(Rebroadcast) Noam Chomsky | Prescient Predictions? |...

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/11/15

This week, I’m excited to share a special rebroadcast from the Origins Podcast archives: my original Origins Podcast conversation with Noam Chomsky.We recorded this dialog over six years ago, as an update to a conversation we’d held three years prior , before the political upheavals of Trump and Brexit.Listening back now, it’s striking how much of what Noam said remains relevant, and in many cases, deeply prescient. As always, he was incisive, informative, provocative, and brilliant. We covered a

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59:38

What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/11/07

As we move into the end of the year, I’m excited to return to our recurring series “What’s New in Science” with my co-host Sabine Hossenfelder. In this month’s episode, we started by tackling a favorite subject: scientific hype. Sabine kicked things off by dissecting a recent, highly suspect press release claiming a million-qubit quantum computer is on the horizon. I then brought up a National Geographic article claiming that “warp drive is speeding closer to reality” , and we discussed the reasons

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39:44

Spooky Physics!

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss ·

2025/10/31

In a special Halloween episode of the Origins Podcast, which I’ve have decided to call “Spooky Physics!”, I explore why you shouldn’t be afraid of the unknown, and in particular of supernatural gobbledygook. We look at the fundamental physics that debunks popular supernatural ideas.Take ghosts, for example. Physics is a two way street. If you can see a ghost, it must interact with light. But that very interaction, electromagnetism, is what stops you from walking through a wall. A ghost simply can’t

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