The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Gad Saad: Final Episode of The War on Science Interviews

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

As The War on Science continues to circulate and reach readers around the world, I had the privilege of closing our Origins mini series, The War on Science Interviews, with my colleague and book contributor Gad Saad. It felt fitting to end the series with a candid and provocative conversation that reflects the spirit of the project itself.The essays and interviews collected around this book address a wide range of concerns: the ideological corruption of science, the erosion of free speech in academia, the replacement of scholarship with activism in many disciplines, and the disruptions now spreading from mathematics to medicine. We explore how cancel culture and DEI bureaucracies weaken excellence, how biology is distorted for political ends, and how false premises about gender and sex compromise both science and medicine. The conversations are blunt and challenging, but they also aim to outline principles that can help universities recover integrity, trust, and the courage to return to embracing free inquiry.Gad and I discussed many of these themes directly. He confronts the absurdities of modern campus culture, and his voice joins those the other contributors who have argued that ignoring these trends will not make them disappear. Many academics have hoped the problems would fade on their own. They have not. The internal culture war in academia must be confronted openly if scholarship and science are to thrive in the West.I am hopeful the book will spark debate in universities and among the wider public. If you would like the full context for this episode, you can watch the complete War on Science Interviews mini series at this link here. In the meantime enjoy this episode now.With this finale, Origins now returns to its regular biweekly release schedule. We have some fascinating new conversations, educational content, and science news in store that I am excited to share.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

Hi, and welcome to the Orges' Podcast. I'm your host, Lawrence Krause. This week, we're co-posting a podcast that originally aired on God's podcast between he and I about our new book, The War on Science, in which he's a co-author. This is clearly a subject of interest to him for a long time, as has been for me, and it was a forthright and detailed discussion of a number of the issues in the book. And we felt it would be great to try and increase the receptor. of this podcast by co-posting it on both our podcasts. And since I didn't get a chance to have an interview with GAD

during our 20 days of 20 interviews for the War and Science, it's nice to be able to post this as the 21st War on Science podcast. You can support the foundation, of course, by subscribing to our Substack channel and be able to see the podcasts and free, or you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch it there, or of course, listen to it and watch it on any podcast listening site. So with no further ado, a provocative and interesting and often humorous discussion with God's side.

The world is excited about the, yeah, okay, you got it. I don't have my physical copy yet, so I can't do it ever. The War on Science, edited by Krause himself, 39 renowned scientists and scholars speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry, and the scientific process. For people who don't know what an edited book is, you have one person, or possibly more, who are sort of serving as the orchestrator of the whole project, and then a whole bunch of people contribute individual chapters.

Take it away. Tell us how this came about, Lawrence, the people that are in it, and so on. Okay, and I should say that one of the extremely, very, very, very distinguished contributors is one person that I'm talking to right now, Gadsad. And I'm very happy, God, that you contribute to the book. and it's a lovely, lovely piece as not surprising. The way, look, both you and I and you for a long time, I know, but for you and I for a long time,

I've been talking about issues that are in the way of science and scholarship and getting in the way of academia at your own institution and many institutions. And the question is how to deal with this internal culture war. And as you know, and I'm sure people are listening to know, many faculty are either afraid to speak out, because they see what happens to people who speak out. Or they try and sort of hang below the radar.

I think the bulk of fact, they, frankly, are not as woke as appears, but they basically just want to get on with their work, and they just ignore it. And that's part of the problem, of course, because it helps contribute the fact that people aren't seeing an act of backlash is one of the reasons that many of the people trying to interfere with free speech or exchange scientific integrity for political activism are so active. And I was thinking that it would be useful to do a number of things. First of all, to have a number, a wide variety of distinguished people from within academia

speak out, and there were several criteria. One is that they should span many different fields, because this permeates all of academia. Secondly, they should span the political spectrum. They shouldn't be all seen as right wing or left wing. So we have the people that are, you know, canonically thought of as lefties, you know, Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson and Neil Ferguson. And I don't know where you follow you.

Some people call you left. Some people call you right. I don't know what. It doesn't matter. And that's very important because we don't want to see this as an attack from the right, because, of course, the right is attacking a lot of the woke left. or an attack from left. And it had to be people from within

because a lot of people are attacking academia from outside, but this is from within. And the fact that these people are willing to speak out publicly, we hoped, would also send a message that it's okay to speak out. If these people can speak out, you can speak out. And so hopefully this will have an impact within academia, but also it's important for the public to know what's going on

in a real way, not hyperbole and other things. And so this book is, it's about all aspects of what's going on in many different ways and fields ranging from, you know, mathematics to medicine to classics even. and also, you know, spanning the spectrum from cancel culture, people who've been canceled as a result of what they say, to attacks on scientific integrity in areas like, as they say, mathematics or physics, which you might say, who cares, to things like medicine where we all care. In a sense that we want doctors to be competent, and we also want our children to be protected from ideology in the face of real potential dangers, like as a number of people in this talk about gender affirming care,

for young people. And what's really disturbing, and you can read in this, is that a lot of organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatric Specialists or whatever it's called, are advocating care based on references to articles, which are not scientific, which don't do what they claim to do. Yet, but yet what often happens nowadays is people quote an article and other people then quote the people who are quoting the article and they don't even look at it.

And you see these organizations jumping on the bandwagon for care that could damage young people that could affect their sexuality and their sexual pleasure for their whole life, much less everything else. And so it's really, for many people, I think they'll be surprised. You know, you talk about, and I've talked about the ridiculous, unfortunately, what's legal in Canada to be able to have advertisements like at your own and other universities where you say, we're looking for the best people as long as they're Two-Spirit or they identify as women. And Two-Spirit itself is a ridiculous word, which doesn't even come from indigenous people. And then other things, which are really, you know, the intent, of course, of all of this is the intent was good to stop inequities, but the implementation is ridiculous. that often further not only reinforces the inequities, but reinforces notions of even racism.

Take this ridiculous thing from Jonathan Katzen as wife Solvede Gold, who talk about classics at Princeton. What Princeton decided to do was if you do a degree in classics, you no longer have to take Greek or Latin. Now, why would such a ridiculous thing be done? Well, the reason is what is obviously a racist reason. The idea is that people, certain minority groups, won't be able to handle Latin. You learn Swahili in classics. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you, you, so that the claim basically is these groups are not able to handle intellectual work at the caliber of anyone else, so we have to water it down.

What is that, what message is that sending? that's a worse racist message that the people are trying to attack. So there's no sense to any of this, and it is really problematic. And the book, I hope, will demonstrate a lot of the problems. And the last part of the book are a number of people like Dorian Abbott and other people who are recommending a trajectory to get out of this. But from my point of view, I've always felt that the only way this will end, because academic administrators have no backbone, as you know from your own administration

and other people. they'll go wherever the wind is blowing. The only way ultimately is for academics and faculty to take back the reins of universities and be willing to make universities what they once were were places of free and open debate. No ideas are sacred. Scholarship more than anything and merit more than anything. And that's what you and I have been advocating for a long time. Well, I want to go back and stress how you started your answer,

which the two objectives that you had for the book in terms of political diversity and field diversity, I think strategically that was crucially important. Because when I first started standing on top of the mountain, Lawrence, screaming about what was happening in academia, people would write back to me and say, well, Professor Sabaab, that's just in some bullshit esoteric humanities thing. It's never going to come for us and then fill in the black

in chemistry, in mathematics, in physics. Then I would say, no, no, no, it's coming for everybody. it might come later to you. You'll catch the disease later, but it's going to come for you because it eradicates all reason, all logic, all common sense. So I think it was spot on for you to,

and you've done an amazing job. I mean, you know, you got Amy Wax, the neurologist turned lawyer. You've got Janice Fiamingo. She's from English literature. You've got the hard sciences. So that's spot on. Do you think that the book,

being an edited book, authored by large, all academics, every chapter, do you think that it can still resonate with the public at large, or are you targeting this largely for an academic audience? Well, you know, I'm targeting it for both audiences. As you know, having published books, when I publish a book, I'd like things, but I have no control over there we're going to go. My hope is there are enough, I mean, you introduced me as an academic celebrity,

and I've written the introduction to the book, but there are a number of other, quote, well-known people who, my hope will, their names on the book will attract the public. And, you know, Jordan Peterson is a good example,

and Dawkins and other people, and, you know, I could add you were other people, but, you know, and then there are people who academics, no one will have heard of. Yeah. But, you know,

what I used to, when I ran at my university, big events, panels on different subjects, I'd often have people who were famous, and other really good people. And what I often found is the audience would say, I came for X, but it was Y that really impressed me.

And so my hope is there are some really great articles by people that aren't as well known among the public. And so my hope is that some of the bigger names and will encourage the public to pick up the book, but that academics will see this and look, and especially people in certain, Fields will say, these are serious academics, too. They're not just, you know.

Culture warriors. Yeah, culture warriors. And, you know, what you said at the beginning resonates. Because if you're beginning of my introduction, I think I began by saying when I was at Yale, when I taught at Yale, we used to laugh. We were on Science Hill. And this was in the 80s, and we'd look down the hill at English, which was full of deconstructionism.

And we'd laugh. And we'd see that, you know, Alan Sokol, for example, is one of the authors who wrote that famous spoof in the 19, in 1996. And he was spoofing something we thought, well, this will never happen in science. And then I showed virtually the same words now appear in math journals and physics journals and chemistry journals. And it really is a matter of, you know, that old saying, first they came for the, you know, whoever it was. And then they come for you. And so I'm hoping one of the good things and one of the reasons I'm always happy to talk to you.

Let me say that first. but is that a number of people like yourself and other people have a voice as well. And I'm hoping if we all to get together and speak out around the time of the book, that will reach enough of an audience. And it takes a thousand points of light. I've discovered that even in physics and every area, that different things will resonate with different people. And we have enough different authors here and different ways of presenting and different subjects

that I'm hoping it could resonate with a broad audience. But, you know, once it's out of my hands, I'm really hoping, you know, it's okay to preach to the converted. But I'm really hoping, and I'm very happy to say, for example, I just found out this morning and I wrote a piece, of course I write for the National Post, but I'm very happy the Globe and Mail. Oh, that's a big breakthrough. And they're going to, this Saturday, the Globe and Mail is.

is going to publish a piece by me related to the book. Anyway, so I'm very happy the Globe and Mail is picking it up. I've written a piece for the New York Times, which I expect will be rejected later today or tomorrow. But so I want to try and reach out because for better or worse, this book is about a war that's for the most part coming from the left. Many of the authors, I did add an addendum. This was written before Donald Trump was elected.

Right. And I have to say the authors have different perspectives on this, which is great, because that's the other thing I did, since I believe in academic freedom. When I chose the people, and that was careful, I said, you write whatever you want. I'm not going to tell you what to write. And so the authors have different perspectives. But it is fair to say, and I've tried to write, and I just wrote a piece in Quillette, that there is an external war on science, at least the United States, that's happening. and we don't pretend that that's not existent. But this book was about the internal culture war, which is still going on.

And it's not, it's not passe, it's not out of date. It's sure Donald Trump and this administration are trying to attack parts of that internal culture war in a way, which I often disagree with, because I don't think you attack intolerance with intolerance. Or you can't say, sure, it's true that a lot of the diversity, equity, inclusion stuff is postmodernness nonsense. But you can't forbid people. But the solution isn't to forbid

faculty to ever talk about it. The solution is to allow free and open debate and the ridiculous ideas will be exposed as ridiculous. A form of Darwinian selection. Exactly. And science is a dialectic. It requires,

when I write a paper, I expect it to be attacked. If it isn't, then I'm disappointed. Because it means no one's interested. And it's only by having that kind of give and take that the good ideas, you know, rise up. And of course, we often say that free speech is important, not for the speech you agree with, for the speech you disagree with. But that's fine. But I think the better than that and more important than that, and I first learned it from my late friend Christopher Hitchens,

but I know he learned it from David Hume, is that the real value of free speech, and I hope some of the people who read this will get this, is learning that you're wrong. If you hear speech that you disagree with every now and then. If you listen to it, you may find out, hey, I can change my mind. I was actually wrong. So if you cut out everything you disagree with, you'll never learn that you're wrong. And that is, of course, why it's essential for academia. Because when we cut out the things we disagree with, we won't get to the truth.

And that's what we're all after if we're in academia. Indeed. Is this your first edited book? It's my first public edited book. As a scientist, I edited a number of scientific years ago. Because I've only, I've done actually this book right here. Wait, this book right here. Here it is. Okay.

That one is evolutionary psychology in the business sciences where I was basically trying to demonstrate the utility of the evolutionary lens in anything, whether be in economic theory or be in leadership or organizational behavior. And so I solicited very much the way you did for your edited book, a bunch of articles from a whole bunch of different people. And, of course, the process of putting together an edited book, curating an edited book is very different from other things. So what are some unique things? I mean, we're both old dogs at this. Did you learn anything new about the frivolity of academics and meeting deadlines or whatever?

Tell us any war stories. I was a chair of a physics department for 15 years. So I've learned of a lot. I mean, that was a learning experience about academics in many ways as, as, as, as, as, as, as, I was going to say as children, but I shouldn't say that. But, but it is, if, it is definitely like hurting cats. And, and in this case, it was even, I mean, as I say, when my academic volumes were people sort of more, you know, knew what was going on. But of course, you get, look, what people are real as academics are people. What I, what, and, and, and, and I love, when I, it always amuses me that academics were once students and they know all the good excuses for being late. And so, you know, the cat ate my homework. And but on the whole, I, I, it, it required,

well, one of the things that's very interesting, of course, is, that you've probably seen, but I've had to deal with a lot, is the way different. different fields require referencing at footnotes. And, and, you know, because if you have a whole, the same field, everyone does things the same. But lawyers and doctors and physicists and other people do things very differently. And how to balance that was really quite an interesting experience. And some people want to know what style should the footnotes be in. And personally, I don't care about style, but in some fields, that's really important. And so dealing with the different academic sensibilities and should this be, you know, an academic article written like a,

you know, a law review or, and so it was, it was, it was like hurting cats, but I actually, in the end, I, I was immensely oppressed with the graciousness of almost everyone who agreed to do this and because they're all, you know, well-meaning. And, and a lot of people spend a lot of time. And I owe people like yourself and other people at debt of gratitude. I hope we're all doing, well, I really felt like we're all doing this for the right reasons. And we don't, and I don't know what's going to happen. Well, I think we, I think I will say we're all doing it for right reasons, because it's not as though we're going to make money off this. It's not as most of us need an extra line on our CV. We're doing it for for the purest of reasons. I mean, if you might remember,

forgive me for reminding the world this, I was writing the article while sitting in the, Newport Beach. Yeah, yeah. Sprouse was able to whisk me away from the beach for about 10 days as I sat at the Starbucks in Newport Beach writing this article. Yeah, and you let me know it. You let me know it. And absolutely, the fact that you would write it on vacation and other people would.

It was really... No, I'm very, very excited about this book. Yes, sir, go on. Yeah, and I was just going to say, I mean, how much... many other contributors have you had chats with to be released in various podcast forms so that we can try to maximize it's yeah we were able to get 20 done great and and for the podcast and we're going to include this in the podcast as well wonderful um we are basically what decided to do starting earlier this we're going to do release now it'll be 21 if we include this be 21 podcast in 21 days

every single day we're one. And I will say in that regard that, I mean, well, you know, this, I imagine how much work this would be. And I know in all books, it's always five times as much. This was 10. I was surprised at how much of work it was because, of course, everyone also has errors and other things. But, but I think we all work together. And I think the 21 podcast, well, I hope also resonate in different ways. and I'm hoping that different people will, you know, release it to their audience. And in that way, we may filter it out. Will you be releasing it on YouTube, podcast, and X? What, this?

No, no, this one or any of the other 20? What we do when, well, traditionally the Origins podcast, we release it on a substack and release it on YouTube. But we haven't released it directly on X. And it also goes into the standard, the audio version goes into all the standard podcast The only reason I ask it is because in the recent past, I would say in the last year or two, I've taken to also posting everything directly on X and it gets a huge number of views. So I think it would be missing out if you don't do that.

Yeah, no. In fact, we're looking into doing that and we have been discussing with X as well. I think you're right. It tends to have, well, there are a few reasons for it. I'll tell you, in my opinion. Okay. Maybe, well, the public should hear this as well. I tend to think, I don't know all the algorithms.

I know Elon Musk and so me, but I think the algorithms, if you post something that isn't X, tends to not reach as modern audience. And I suspect there are algorithmic reasons for that as well in X. And, you know, they're a business. So I can understand that. That supports the idea of directly uploading it on X because if you're Yeah.

That's the point. And so, yeah, we'll try, we will, we will try and coordinate that as well. Because the idea is to reach as broad a public as well. And let me just say, people are worried about Gadzad's next vacation, that, you know, if for some reason, unexpectedly, this book becomes a bestseller, then there will, then the proceeds will be split so that Gadzad could take his beautiful wife and wonderful children on a new publication somewhere nice.

From your lips to God's ear if you believe in God. If you should buy the book to know that if it does well, then this poor man who works day and night and even on his vacations to help write a book will one day be able to go on a nice vacation. That is a lovely wish.

Last question for you because I know you've got a whole bunch of things happening. I think you're traveling today. What are something? So you retired, how many years ago was it, from the university. It would be 2019, so it's six years. So it's been about six years.

You've still maintained the hectic schedule. Are you happy that in a sense you're out of the ecosystem of academia or do you long for the past that you're no longer, give us a sense of where Lawrence Krause is? I miss my students, my graduate students, I think I miss that part. I still, I mean, I still collaborate with physics colleagues on physics papers. I am thankful. I feel like I thank my lucky saints that I got of academia when I did. For so many reasons, not just because of the nonsense that's going on,

but now I see what's happening to my colleagues, many distinguished physicists who are losing their grants and have to fire their postdocs. And it's an awful time. They attack from outside and inside together. I also will say, you know, I've spent my whole life as an academic, but because of the other things I've done,

I've obviously gotten to go beyond the academic community. And I had a longing to try and do things outside the safety net of academia. I want to try it. And so it was something I wanted to do. And so this is interesting. And I'm glad I'm doing that as well. I like to try different things. So even as an academic, I always moved institutions about every 10 years or so

because I found that it's too easy to do to get comfortable. Well, you're definitely not a state. in your lane professor, which I highly admire. And so kudos to you for having been one of the only ones to do so. Lawrence, you're right. Reply? Well, thank you. It's nice to it's, it's, it's the truth from you.

And, and, and, um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm wishing we could one day do one of these together because it's, uh, it'd be great. That would be wonderful. Uh, stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline. I'm very excited to upload this, hopefully tomorrow with the release. with the release of the book. Could you put it up one more time for our audience? Here's a book in U.S. and Canada, July 29th, the release of the book, and you can get it in any, hopefully, way you can get an Amazon.

And if your bookstore doesn't carry it, you should tell them to carry it. And then for people in the UK and Australia, it's going to be released on September 25th. There is a British publisher that's releasing a slightly edited, more edited down, abbreviated version of the book, but it's coming out there. Perfect. Thank you so much for your hard work. Lauren, stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline and you're invited back anytime you'd like. Thanks. Thank you.

Cheers. Hi, it's Lawrence again. As the Origins podcast continues to reach millions of people around the world, I just wanted to say thank you. It's because of your support, whether you listen or watch, that we're able to help enrich the perspective of listeners by providing access to the people and ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world and driving the future of our society in the 21st century. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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