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Hello, and welcome to the Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krause.

I'm Lawrence Krauss sitting here at home because of the pandemic.

The episode is nevertheless with the incomparable Stephen Fry.

We recorded this episode before the pandemic, and that's interesting in itself,

because several of the topics we talked about now take on a new significance, even though it was relatively recently, it was before the pandemic, before Black Lives Matter, before George Floyd.

And I think with that new historical perspective, some of the things we talked about will take on a different significance.

But that's just a small tip of the cosmic iceberg that is the intellect and mind of Stephen Fry.

It's hard to adequately describe him.

He's a writer, an actor, a humorist, a humanist, an intellectual, a historian, a consummate storyteller,

a former criminal, as it turns out, and also a polymath, I guess, is the best way to say it.

He is enjoyable to talk to on almost any subject, and we covered so many subjects, ranging from philosophy in ancient Greek to empiricism and technology and knowledge itself,

computers, AI, physics envy, language, and the excitement about language, which he clearly

manifests so strongly, the nature of teaching, disruption, shame, that's just a small subset of the

of the things we talked about. And what's great is I could listen to Stephen Frye

talk about anything. Not just the exciting ideas we talked about, I could listen to him,

read the phone book for two hours and I'd be mesmerized. And the whole world is luckier

for the fact that we're able to hear him in different ways, as are several major authors.

For example, J.K. Rowling is extremely lucky that Stephen Frye read the entire Harry Potter series for audiobooks.

And that's another reason to listen to them, even if you've read them.

...