Transcription
Let's talk about Lawrence Krauss. Um, a lot of people were asking me to talk about this. I posted some stuff on social media. And by the way, Rebecca Watson of Skeptic, she made an entire video about a lot of this stuff. I think it just came out today as I'm I'm doing this segment right now. You should go watch her video. It's really good. I cover some of the stuff. Some of it's different, but uh we'll see. Whatever. I don't have a script for this or at all. I'm just talking off the cuff here.
But I wanted to show you what we are talking about which uh this is just a great exchange. This is from last year. The date is December 8th, 2024. "Are you the real? Are you the actual real Lawrence Krauss? Can I ask you a physics question?" Because Lawrence Krauss, of course, is a very famous cosmologist. He's written a lot of books about physics. I will admit they are very good books about physics. "Can I ask you a physics question?" "Sure." "What was Jeffrey Epstein like?" Beautiful.
Um, and the reason this has been going viral for a little while here is because uh because Jeffrey Epstein's emails, some of them were released over the past couple of weeks and Lawrence Krauss plays a role in many of those emails. And that's the thing I wanted to talk to you about. Now, in order to make sense of what those emails were about, you need to know a couple of things. One is that I have talked about Lawrence Krauss in recent months, because he just came out with a book called The War on Science. And as I said in several videos, I would love to see a book about the war on science taking place right now where the Trump administration is defunding science and research and RFK Jr. is spreading misinformation about science. There is a war on science right now. But Lawrence Krauss's book, which has contributions from just the worst people, all of whom are like, "I was cancelled because I did something stupid." That book is all about how like STEM uh scholarships and DEI initiatives are the real problem with science. And they don't talk really about Trump at all. And their excuses like, "Well, the book was written before the Trump administration." Doesn't matter. Republicans are still waging a war on science. That's never not been the case. Why are you wasting your time going after like black women getting into labs through a scholarship or something? Just the dumbest people. Anyway, that's why I was mad at him before.
But the thing you need to know about Lawrence Krauss now, when in regards to uh Epstein, let me show you this first. This is from 2011 and this is shortly after people started learning about who Jeffrey Epstein was and who his associates were. And I only bring up a couple things here. Last spring, this is in 2011. And this article from the Daily Beast says, "Last spring in 2010, Epstein completed a 13-month prison sentence for soliciting from a minor in Palm Beach." So in 2010 he was punished for that crime and everyone in his circles knows about that. I feel like we should just use that as a starting point here. Everyone knows what this guy did. So what did Lawrence Krauss have to do with any of this? If I scroll down this article, here's what Professor Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and author of a book, has planned scientific conferences with Epstein in St. Thomas and remained close with him throughout his incarceration. And let's see what Krauss said about this. "Jeffrey has Jeffrey, they're on a first-name basis. Jeffrey has surrounded himself with beautiful women and young women, but they are not as young as the ones that were claimed. As a scientist, I always judge things on empirical evidence. And he has always had and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I've never seen anything else. So, as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were, I would believe him over other people." And though colleagues have criticized him over his relationship with Epstein, Krauss insists, "I don't feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey. I feel raised by it." This, again, I have to repeat, this is after Epstein was in jail for over a year for sexually abusing a child. They all knew it. And Krauss is like, "Well, you people are silly. The people around him are ages 19 to 23. I've done the math. Never younger. What are you talking about?" So, that's a horrible quotation. And I don't want to put words in Rebecca Watson's mouth, but I think at the time she was writing about that. And I believe the way she puts it is she could not believe he said that. And she reached out to him to basically say, "What? Did you actually say that?" And he responded with, and I'm paraphrasing, "Uh-huh." And she's like, "Oh." And she wrote an article about that.
Anyway, here's what's interesting. Now, these emails have started to come out from Jeffrey Epstein. And let me show you one of them here. Uh, this one has Rebecca at the bottom. This is the exchange she had with Lawrence Krauss saying there's some uh disturbing stuff in that article, but I want you to look at this. Krauss writes to Jeffrey Epstein and says, "Just so you know, you can read from bottom up. You may be mad that I was blunt. Haven't heard from you. Hope all is well." And Epstein writes, "No, it was appreciated. Thanks." And then Krauss writes, "Beyond anything else, you are my friend. I hope we can both always remember that no matter what. Are you coming this weekend at all?" Like this is Lawrence Krauss is fangirling over Jeffrey Epstein saying, "Hey, remember when I defended you a second ago in that Daily Beast article and I look horrible? I just want you to know you are my friend." And let's remember that no matter what. And are you coming? And what does Epstein write? "No, I'm in Paris. Thanks." Even Epstein's like, "Dude, I don't want to hang out with you. Go away." So, that is one exchange between Lawrence Krauss and Jeffrey Epstein, and that was in 2011.
Okay, let me skip ahead a little bit to 2018 because back in the day, BuzzFeed had a whole thing called Buzzfeed News. And Buzzfeed News had this whole article about Lawrence Krauss called The Unbeliever, which I don't love as a headline, but look at this. "He became a celebrity for putting science before God. Now, Lawrence Krauss faces allegations of sexual misconduct." And shall we? It's been a while. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the facts of what BuzzFeed reported. And again, look at the date over there. It's 2018, but again, I'm just going to scroll down here. According to a woman, she said Krauss made a comment about her eye makeup and got very close to her face. Suddenly, he lifted her by the arms and pushed her onto the bed beneath him. Forcibly kissing her and trying to pull down the crotch of her tights. She said she struggled to push him off. When he pulled out a condom, she said she got out from under him, said, "I have to go." And rushed out of the room. Uh Krauss said it was consensual, but the woman said that is untrue. It was definitely predatory. I didn't want that to happen. It was not consensual. So, that's disturbing. Buzzfeed News has learned that that incident is one of many wide-ranging allegations of Krauss's inappropriate behavior over the last decade, including groping women, ogling, ogling, I never figured out the pronunciation of that one, and making sexist jokes to undergrads and telling an employee at Arizona State University, where he's a tenure professor, that he was going to buy her birth control so she didn't inconvenience him with maternity leave. And in response to complaints, two institutions, Case Western in Ohio and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario have quietly restricted him from their campuses. So yikes. What else do we got here? In lengthy emails to Buzzfeed News, Krauss denied all of the accusations, calling them false and misleading defamatory allegations. When asked why multiple women over more than a decade have separately accused him of misconduct, he said the answer was obvious. It's because his provocative ideas have made him famous. It's cuz he's famous, y'all. It is common knowledge that a celebrity that celebrity attracts all forms of negative attention from many different angles. Krauss said in a December email, "There is no pattern of discontent revealed here that suggests any other explanation, you guys. They're all just accusing him of very specific things cuz he's famous." Totally.
What else do we got in this article, which by the way is still online, but if we go down, there was a couple other things I want to show you. Krauss's reputation took a hit in April of 2011. This is what I just showed you. After he publicly defended Epstein, a wealthy financier who was convicted of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl and spent 13 months in a Florida jail. Epstein was one of the origin projects major donors. The origin projects project is something Krauss was launching at Arizona State. It was like his big thing. He got funding from Epstein. And again, that may not be a problem before all the stuff went down, but afterwards maybe find different funding or something. Krauss told the Daily Beast his support of the financier was based purely on the facts. And then he said that stupid quote I read to you.
What else we got here? Oh, hey, there was another undergraduate who goes by the initial A. A was an undergraduate who met him in 2008 at the American Atheist Convention. Three years later, when she and other students walked into the bar at the same meeting in De Moine, Iowa, A recalled, Krauss pulled over a chair for her and started running his hand up her leg under the table. "I kind of shifted away," A said. He put his hand on again. I crossed my legs. He put his hand on again. Eventually, I had to like physically turn my entire body. Yikes. What else we got here? What else? Um, this is another situation with conference delegates chatting over drinks. One of her friends asked Krauss for a selfie. As the woman held out her phone to take the picture, she said she saw Krauss reach over her friend's shoulder and grab her right breast. As soon as she reacted, which was instantaneously, she body checked him and then she spun around. And again, Krauss denies all of this.
Oh, look at this. Four former employees of Arizona State's Origins Project told BuzzFeed News that Krauss's workplace behavior was sometimes offensive, calling him a sexist and a womanizer. At a dinner event at the school's university club in October of 2015, for instance, a 19-year-old undergraduate said she was left feeling acutely uncomfortable when he looked at her from head to toe, smirked. Never smirk. Smirking is no. And told her he liked the short jumper she was wearing. Two eyewitnesses confirmed her account. In April 2016, an Origin staffer angrily posted on Facebook about how Krauss suggested that I should dress up like a hoola girl while advertising for an event. Another employee was so upset by his behavior she started keeping a record written record of offensive incidents. Said he understood why people didn't like to hire women of childbearing age because it isn't fair to have to pay maternity benefit, she wrote in one entry. Said he's going to buy me birth control so I don't get pregnant and inconvenience him. Asked if I was planning to get pregnant. I will say about all those incidents, they're all disturbing. I could also totally see someone who doesn't know how to be social uh who's just socially awkward doing a lot of those things and just making everyone uncomfortable. That that stuff is not a crime. It just makes you like someone everyone else talks about. But the earlier stuff is is definitely disturbing. Um, was there anything else here I wanted to mention?
Anyway, so that article that was the thing that came out in 2018 and the repercussions from that article were pretty major and pretty quick. After the article was published, a lot of atheist groups and event organizers just distanced themselves uh themselves from Krauss. Arizona State University said they were going to do an investigation into the matter and they put him on paid leave while they did the investigation and then they said, "We're done with our investigation." And I think Lawrence Krauss was like, "You can't fire me. I quit." And he just retired on his own. And the report, I think, never came out. Um, and that's kind of where we've been at ever since. Now, why do I bring all that up? Couple things. One is Lawrence Krauss. The only thing I remember about that time because this wasn't my story here is that Krauss put up a link on social media. It was like a multi-page, how big was this? Like a nine-page response to the BuzzFeed article. Um, and he basically went through all his version of the story. He responds to all the allegations and why people are overreacting or misinterpreting what he said or did and he goes through all of this. I'm not going to read all this for you again. This is several years old, but he did put out this long uh response to it and it is messed up in some ways. Um, I will tell you that when Arizona State finished their investigation, they did confirm reports that Krauss groped a woman at a conference in Australia violating their sexual harassment policy. Um, and ASU, the reason they couldn't just magically fire Krauss is because he was tenured. There's a process for that and it's lengthy. And before they could complete that, Krauss just announced he was going to retire. But there was one other thing he said. When he retired, he said this, "My experience over the past seven months has led me to surmise that even following such an outcome, if he was forgiven or reconciled or whatever, following such an outcome, I would no longer encounter a working environment at ASU that is conducive to continuing my active teaching, research, and service activities." And I just I remember hearing that and thinking there was something remarkably tonedeaf about a person who is accused by multiple women at the school of inappropriate behavior saying he's retiring because it's just too hard to work in this environment at ASU. So that wasn't great.
So here's what's been happening this past week. For those of you who are not addicted to social media, um, one of the writers for that BuzzFeed article, that's Peter down here, he wrote, "Interesting to see Lawrence Krauss cropping up in today's Epstein documents. No date or context for this, but our reporting at BuzzFeed News identified Epstein as a significant source of funding for Krauss." And then this science journalist Dan Geristo said, "By my count, there are 65 documents with emails between Krauss and Epstein. In many of them, Krauss seems to ask Epstein for advice about the allegations of sexual misconduct leveled toward him." Oh, really? Tell me more. And I I want to show you this. This was in a Canadian news article about this and it just summarized it really quickly. Look at this one. "In late 2017, Mr. Krauss returned to that friend Epstein with a request. He had himself been accused of sexual misconduct. Allegations he denies and he sent Mr. Epstein a copy of a draft response." This is like that nine nine-page response letter. "Could use advice," Mr. Krauss wrote in an email. Mr. Epstein's typo answer. "Did you have sex with her? Condom. Did she take it? I wouldn't respond." By the way, this has nothing to do with anything, but if you've seen any of these emails, and I'm going to show you some of these emails, the one thing that was stunning is how bad the grammar is for every one of these well-connected, very wealthy people. None of them know how to write an email. I will like beat myself over the head if I misspelled a word in an email I have already sent. And these guys are writing like they are on the toilet using one hand at all times. Anyway, let's see some of these emails.
Here's what uh that journalist Dan Gristo said. Here's Krauss emailing Epstein about the allegations detailed to him in BuzzFeed's email. Notably, Krauss does not deny number six that he groped a woman's breast during a selfie. Let's take a look at this one, shall we? Here is this uh let's see what we could find here at the very top. This is dated December of 2017. "Buzzfeed news inquiry regarding allegations of sexual harassment." And this is Krauss writing to Epstein. Importance. Hi. And he's basically saying this is what I'm going to write in response. So Epstein got any suggestions for me? Item number one, allegation number one. I did neck with that woman but never forced myself upon her. Number two, this is what I told you about. A student came to me for advice. I never did anything. Item three, I have no idea about this. Number four, never happened. Number five, this was on a cruise with my female companion. Number six, the uh I touched a woman's breast. Look at what he wrote for number six. This one you know about. Shall we talk?" Krauss is going to Epstein. Mind you, this is years after Epstein has been in jail for doing what Epstein does. So that's uh creepy.
Um, he then sent Epstein a draft of that like nine-page thing. And, uh, check this out. This is a different email. I'm just going to at the top of your screen, you could see December 11th, 2017. Here's Epstein writing in again the worst English and grammar ever. "Normally their strategy will be to take back your defense to the accusers and attack each one. If they find you are right, they will leave it out of the article and only go with the conflicted. I think you should include short concise cover letter that you would like published in its entirety. It can reference your attachment that you will put on your website that goes into more details. But in general, he's saying you should just say these are false. They were either investigated and found lacking or ignored, etc. Often they throw out the near publishing date just to get you to answer." That is Epstein's advice to Krauss, just saying, "Eh, just tell them you didn't do it. Write a little cover letter. Tell them to read your entire statement and usually don't be worried when they said we're going to publish soon." They just do that to scare you. Who goes to Jeffrey Epstein for advice on how to deal with allegations of misconduct? Probably someone who knows Jeffrey Epstein has been accused of sexual misconduct. And what does Lawrence Krauss say? "Importance. Hi. Thanks. I need to get this or something to them quickly. I do feel the need to respond to each of their claims. Otherwise, they would say I don't deny them. We'll include a short preamble. I'm going to CC the letter to the BuzzFeed lawyers. I figure I will see whether the Buzzfeed story gets any traction at all or appears before putting it up on my website or tweeting and Facebooking it." He's basically like, "All right, I'll write up this response, but maybe no one cares about BuzzFeed News and no one will notice this article, in which case, why would I waste my time with that?"
Well, what happened after that? So, let's forward to a couple months later. Here's another email. Uh, not that one. This one. Look at the date here. Uh, this is from Monday, February 26, 2018. Uh, was it right after I need to double check when was that Buzzfeed article published again? The Buzzfeed article was published. February 22nd, 2018. And this is a couple days after that. "I had my call with the bulletin." The bulletin is like, you know, the famous doomsday clock that says the world is like three minutes from nuclear meltdown or whatever. Lawrence Krauss was like the guy in charge of that or at least one of the dudes at the top. And he says, "I had my call with them. I'm going to take a voluntary leave as chair of the board, allowing me and them to make nice statements about me and how the board appreciates me, has never had a complaint how professional I am, and how they hope I will return after this is subsided." The alternative was worse. Look at this dude doing like doing PR in real time here. I'm gonna step down so they can say how awesome I am and I can say how awesome I am and then I I'll just go back when everything dies down. To which what does Jeffree say in response to all this? Uh oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Here's the whole response just a few hours. Was that was it hours before? I can't tell anymore. Jeffrey Epstein wrote "yikes." And then what else does Lawrence Krauss say? Uh, Lawrence Krauss wrote, "They claimed they had 1,500 hits. This is the atomic three minutes doomsday clock people. They claimed they had 1500 hits for their announcement about about me and BuzzFeed, which doesn't seem like a lot, but they thought so. And they're getting pressure from various of their supporters and senior people. Dot dot. This three-week thing may be true, like the life cycle of these articles, but I wonder if I will ever really recover. I wish they would indict Trump or something right now." Great. I wish Trump got indicted so no one would talk about how I allegedly did all these sex creepy things. That's great. That's part of the email chain. Uh do we have anything else here?
Anyway, what else do we have from uh our buddy Lawrence? Oh, this may be our favorite. This may be the best one in the bunch. This is a couple months later. Look at the very bottom. I'll remove myself here. Tina Brown, the famous magazine editor, said uh to a group of people, "The Women in the World Summit opens April 12th and runs through April 14th with a power-packed agenda of remarkable female newsmakers sharing their stories of male misbehaviors." And these dudes sent this email around. Lawrence Krauss sent it to Epstein. Look at the very top there. On April 5th, Lawrence Krauss sent that out and said, "Enjoy women talking about men being annoying." And what does Epstein say in response to Oh, look at this. From Lawrence Krauss to Jeffrey Epstein. Let's do a men of the world conference. Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Al Franken, Woody Allen, and I can't tell if Lawrence Krauss is putting his name on that list or if that's part of his signature line, but I don't know. I think this is what passes for humor in creeper circles. That one's just faking weird to me.
Uh, what else was there to show you from this batch? Oh, there was one other thing that got some traction online, which is one of the emails highlighted how Lawrence Krauss wanted Jeffrey Epstein to fund a thing he wanted to do. And it's called the New Origins Project presents Strange Bedfellows, which honestly, given everything I just said, bedfellows is not the word you want to be using right now. But they said, "We're going to bring together cultural icons, celebrities, movie stars to talk with famous scientists." And it's moderated by Lawrence Krauss. And they want to make this a TV show. And look, first season, we have 23 participants who have already agreed in principle. We'll have Johnny Depp. Uh-huh. Great. Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson talking creativity in music with Nobel Laureates. We'll have Woody Allen talk about the human condition with Noam Chomsky. Like, just stop there. This is not a good project. It's not going to end well. Look at number eight. Barack Obama and Stephen Pinker, which sounds maybe interesting. Pinker isn't great, but like anyway, look at the bottom of this budget. We wanted a $1.2 million for the episodes. It would cost us a lot more money for fees, venues, transportation, etc. This is a project Krauss wanted to do, and apparently he emailed Epstein about this. Uh, I don't think it got funded for whatever reason.
I think the last thing I'm going to say is that uh what's Lawrence Cross up to these days? Well, he just announced that he's doing a book tour event. And where is this taking place? It's taking place at the Free Speech Union of Canada. And they're having this event for his new book, The War on Science, which has nothing to do with anything about RFK or Donald Trump. But they're doing this later this month, November 27th. Um, by the way, you know what the Free Speech Union of Canada is? It is a group. I'll just show you this right here. Here's a post from Lawrence Krauss from a couple years ago, I think. "Today, the Free Speech Union of Canada officially launched its website, and it is my distinct honor to be its inaugural chairman of the board." Oh, this is from February of this year. Lawrence Krauss began a group called the Free Speech Union of Canada because you know in Canada you're not allowed to say controversial things. Um, so he started his own group and now he's promoting his book tour as if it is. Look you guys, I got invited to speak to this group. It's his group. It's just weird.
So anyway, how's that for a deep dive into what Lawrence Krauss is up to? It is uh weird and it's always been weird for many many years. And it's sad because like I said, I'm not kidding. His books are pretty good. He's a good writer. I liked when he was challenging uh Christianity and calling out religious but also there are plenty of other people who do that who don't have a gazillion allegations. And the arrogance is I don't know if that's the right word to be like that. All these women are coming after me cuz you know I'm famous. They all want me. It is creepy. All right, I'll take questions. Oh, thank you for that donation. Love your work. I appreciate that. Thank you. Danger of mouse. Everyone who interacted with this dude sound like infatuated school kids. No kidding. And the way all of them, they all write with like weird ass grammar. None of them know how to spell. They all have PhDs and are considered brilliant in their fields. Not a single one of them knows what a punctuation mark is. I think the Daily Show did a whole bit about how that's the true takeaway from the Epstein emails. No one knows how to write or spell anything. No wonder they like chat GPT so much and are obsessed with AI. It'll correct and make them not look dumb. How would you like to be the editor of their books and you're reading like draft one and it's just these types of emails because it didn't happen in front of them. It didn't happen. That ain't science. Yes, the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. I didn't see it when I was with him. He only had girls 19 to 23. Why did you check their IDs? How do you know that? I don't know how you tell someone's age with that specificity. To me, it's funny how Maggas people think we're going to be scared if any of our guys are on the list, but we say no if those dudes, too. No kidding. How many people are like, you know, if the Epstein files are released, Bill Clinton's going down. And to a person, every single Democrat I've seen online is like, so you think I have an allegiance to Bill Clinton? Democrats who have tons of problems, one of their problems is not that they live in a cult of personality. Like, you want to take Barack Obama down at this point? I don't care. Go do it. It doesn't matter. I'm not like my entire life does not revolve around whoever's in charge of the Democratic party. That's not my personality. I'm inclined to think they might have done some of that bad grammar on purpose to make it harder to search their records. But am I giving them too much credit? Yes, I think you're giving them way too much credit. They did not think anyone else would see these emails. Um, and I wonder if this is like this is how Epstein types, so then they just started being lazy in their own emails. I don't know. It's It's weird. And again, I I want to stress if the only thing we knew about Epstein is he's given a lot of money to fund science for whatever reason to cover up the horrible stuff he's doing, I kind of understand why these guys want to be in with him. He gives them money to do the stuff they want to do. But all of the things we just talked about happened after Epstein was in jail for soliciting a minor. And that's just the one we knew about. Apparently, there was much more going on that we're now finding out about. So, they knew about this stuff and they kept on going with it. Oh, one other thing I would mention. One of the things Krauss said in response to all of this is that even after the BuzzFeed article or something or maybe after he said that stuff defending Epstein to the Daily Beast in 2011, he was invited to the Center for Inquiry events and you know, they had a sexual harassment policy. Clearly that group was not scared of him. Um, maybe I don't remember if that was after BuzzFeed or not, but one atheist groups historically do not have very good policies on these things. And two, the Center for Inquiry has become like a right-wing anti-trans organization. So like it doesn't surprise me that they would invite Lawrence Krauss to things despite all the stuff he's done. They invite Richard Dawkins to everything. They work with Richard Dawkins and he said vile stuff about trans people and Muslims. So I don't know that that's your best defense.