SIO124: Lawrence Krauss Accused of Sexual Misconduct; Interview with Monette Richards

Serious Inquiries Only

Thomas Smith

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2018

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a doozy of an episode. Lawrence Krauss was recently accused of a range of sexual harassment and misconduct. I believe his accusers. It's documented quite thoroughly by BuzzFeed. Since people are trying to casually dismiss the accusations as "Ugh, BuzzFeed" and "Anonymous sources," I took the time to make a quick and dirty breakdown of the individual charges and how many named and unnamed sources there are, and the corroborating evidence. It's not just "anonymous sources" or "rumors" by any means. Here's a great breakdown by Rebecca Watson, and here's an episode by Godless Mama. Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty had an event scheduled with Krauss a few days after the article dropped. They ultimately agreed he shouldn't appear onstage, but for what I think were bad reasons. There's a 15 minute recording of the event that I break down. It's profoundly disappointing. Though they give pay some lip service to #metoo, it is my opinion that their actual words and conduct in this instance has fallen way short. In fact, I believe the way they have handled this instance is part of the sexist system that is leading to predators getting away with bad behavior for so long. Sam references Keillor as though he's a victim of #metoo, but I go back into that story and there are even more updates about his sexual misconduct. And finally, on a more positive note, I have a great interview with Monette Richards, who has an exciting announcement! The Kickstarter has begun for Secular Women Work! Please check it out and consider supporting them! She was quoted in this Gizmodo article about Krauss. Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point! Support the show at seriouspod.com/support! Follow us on Twitter: @seriouspod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seriouspod For comments, email thomas@seriouspod.com Direct Download

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to serious inquiries only. Oh, Hello and welcome to serious inquiries only this is episode 124. I'm your host Thomas Smith.
0:34.3	All right, well this is not the most pleasant of episodes to be Frank. If you're
0:39.6	following anything in the secular community you've likely seen by now that Lawrence Kraus had an article
0:45.5	written in BuzzFeed about him detailing multiple accounts by multiple different people,
0:51.4	both named and unnamed accusing him of various degrees and incidents of sexual harassment and misconduct.
0:59.0	I for one believe the accusers and it is not particularly close.
1:03.3	There are a number of things to talk about around this.
1:06.0	So here's my plan for today.
1:07.6	I've said many times before that I believe women should be the ones we're listening
1:11.8	to about this issue. They should be the ones we're listening to about this issue.
1:13.5	They should be the ones leading the conversation.
1:16.0	They are leading the conversation and we need to listen.
1:18.8	I want to recommend an excellent video by Rebecca Watson, link in the show notes. She talks about
1:25.0	the Lawrence Kraus story. She was quoted in the BuzzFeed article, so that's an
1:29.6	excellent person to listen to. Go check that out. Another good voice to check out would be
1:33.5	Tracy aka Godless Mama who has been on the show recently but she's started a
1:39.1	podcast and she just did an episode called I've had enough where she talks about Lawrence Kraus.
1:44.1	I'm going to link that in the show notes as well.
1:46.1	And of course, most of all, we need to be listening to the very credible accusations
1:52.0	and accusers and
1:53.7	eyewitnesses and corroborating witnesses in the article itself in
1:57.8	buzzfeed we should have been doing this a long time ago but we as a community
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Thomas Smith, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Thomas Smith and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.