The former Arizona State University physicist reported in 2018 this advice from his “religious right wing law professor brother” [that’s Krauss’s description, not mine]:
Therefore i think you should pursue a mixed strategy. On the one hand, you should non-aggressively, soberly, suggest that the groping allegation is exaggerated but likely the result of a good faith misunderstanding. At the same time you should acknowledge that all these accusations have woken you up. You had never fully realized how vulnerable women are, and how the “me-too” campaign reflects decades of oppression and exploitation. You were blindly ignorant of, and insensitive to, this reality. this blind ignorance was all the more inexcusable in that you yourself have a daughter. You absolutely pledge that all your future behavior will reflect this newfound realization. You pledge to enroll (and indeed you should find and enroll in before making this pledge) in a program designed to educate and sensitize men to the pervasive atmosphere of sexual assault and harassment. You pledge to devote the rest of your career to this goal and to change your behavior to reflect this new realization. You pledge never ever again to make gestures that even have a slight chance of being perceived as harassing to females. You apologize profusely for all your hurtful gestures in the past, and recognize that the women who have complained about you are not making their complaints up. You were too physical in the past, you were blind to the vulnerability of women exposed to men in positions of power and influence, you abused that position and their trust even though you were sure at the time that you were doing nothing wrong. You know better now, because you understand women’s vulnerability in ways you didn’t before. You humbly ask Arizona State, or indeed any university that is interested, to give you another chance to show that you are in fact nothing but a caring, active physicist who is now more respectful of women. You are absolutely dedicated to pursuing your academic aspirations without future distractions. Importantly, you should do something dramatic, such as offer 100% of the royalties from your next book to some foundation that assists women who have been victims of harassment.
Jeez, what an asshole, to recommend that the “caring, active physicist” bring his daughter into his P.R. strategy.
In any case it seems that Krauss did not follow his brother’s advice. Not only does Krauss express no remorse about his own behavior, he hedges his bets on Jeffrey Epstein, referring to the financier’s “alleged criminality.” (Elsewhere he wrote that “everyone was a victim, including Jeffrey here.”)
Scroll down below Krauss’s linked post and here are the other things they recommend you read:
“Why We Need to Talk About Transgender School Shooters,” indeed. On the other hand, it seems that this is only the 325th most important thing they needed to talk about, so maybe that need wasn’t so great.
And here’s the second of those links:
I agree with sub-heading on this one. The paradox is that Arizona State, Harvard, and other Epstein-associated universities were themselves “rewarding those who exemplify and cultivate intellectual vices.”
And, yes, I’m saying intellectual vices, not just financial and sexual vices. To the extent that Epstein stood for anything intellectually, it was the principle of recirculating B.S. from well-placed elites (as here). Also the above proposed parade of insincerity (oh, sorry, the “mixed strategy”) is an intellectual vice. For that matter, I think it was an intellectual vice for Biggar to misrepresent the position of someone with whom he had an academic and political dispute.
That’s fine. Biggar can be correct in his larger point even if he does not always live up to these ideals himself, and it’s not his fault that he happened to have published on the same website as someone who is a kind of negative illustration of his point. It’s just interesting to see the juxtaposition.
But, hey, for a mere $4500 you can go on a one-week cruise with this guy (that’s Krauss, not Biggar). I think that part of what you get for this equivalent of 3130 Jamaican beef patties is the right to come up to him on the boat and say, “Hey, Lorrie, what’s your position on the statement, ‘You had never fully realized how vulnerable women are, and how the “me-too” campaign reflects decades of oppression and exploitation. . . . You absolutely pledge that all your future behavior will reflect this newfound realization. . . . You pledge to devote the rest of your career to this goal’?” For $4500, the least he can give you is a straight answer.
I am not too familiar with all this Epstein case, but I think I remember years ago that some kind of “Epstein list” was considered to be a so-called “conspiracy theory”.
Given the amount of times I have read “Epstein” in the title of posts in recent months, I am wondering whether, at least some things, about this Epstein case are now not seen as a “conspiracy”.
If this is (largely) correct, might this be a case of how a conspiracy might sometimes be somewhat like a truth: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being true.
Anon:
Nobody ever ridiculed the Epstein story. It didn’t get so much attention at first, but it wasn’t ridiculed. It was mostly in the open, not so much a conspiracy except that it seems that Epstein’s lawyers pulled some strings to get him lenient treatment, but that’s pretty standard with the U.S. legal system, probably true of other legal systems around the world.
I have no idea what it would mean for the Epstein story to have been “violently opposed.” It was minimized by people such as the above-discussed Lawrence Krauss, I guess because it didn’t make Krauss and others look so good to be hanging out with a sex criminal.
There are some more conspiratorial claims regarding Epstein, such as the conjecture that he was murdered rather than committing suicide, but it’s my impression that there’s no good evidence for that. And then there are some intermediate claims such as that government officials were stalling the release of the files as a way to spare political figures from embarrassment. This could well be true and it could be considered a conspiracy, or maybe it’s just things that people are doing.
In any case, it doesn’t have to be a conspiracy for it to be a scandal. Rich and powerful people abasing themselves to criminals in the hope of getting some free money, yes, that’s the way of the world, but it’s still a scandal, and rightfully so. If Lawrence Summers, Lawrence Krauss, Kenneth Starr, Richard Axel, etc etc want to engage in this sort of bad behavior, it’s only fair that the rest of us can find this horrible and scandalous.
The ridicule and violently oppose and accept as truth thing applies to the conspiracy theory. I did a quick search just now and it looks like the conspiracy around Epstein is/was about some list, and that’s still a conspiracy theory I guess then.
I thought with all these e-mails that I have heard people talk about on here, and the many posts, there was something confirmed about that part. Again, I am not familiar with details and do not want to further investigate, but thanks to your comment and my quick search just now I reason the “conspiracy theory” about some list or something like that is still seen as a “conspiracy theory” and that was what my largely post was about.
You’re misremembering. It was never really disputed that lots of other people did crimes with Epstein, that he kept a list of contacts, that there were files with lots of important people in them that were being kept under wraps. The existence of the “black book” is a matter of public record apparently since it appeared in court in 2009 and was published online in 2015. I think it was also pretty tacitly accepted that people are and were kept quiet through mutual blackmail. The conspiracy theory you are most likely thinking of was “Epstein didn’t kill himself.” There were and are also ongoing conspiracy theories about specific people being implicated by the redacted parts of the then-confidential Epstein files. But the existing of Epstein files and an Epstein list have never been in doubt.
I say conspiracy theory in this context as a non-pejorative; neither the idea that Epstein was killed or allowed to kill himself, nor that important people are being kept redacted, seem all that implausible to me. After all, it’s been established as fact that in this case there actually was a conspiracy of rich, powerful, and famous people.
I just read some stuff on wikipedia that mentions the conspiracy theory of a client list, which makes it seem like it’s still a “conspiracy”, but it also mentions the “black book” you also mention. So apparently there is a difference between a “client list” and a “black book”, or the client list was once a conspiracy and now not anymore because it’s called a black book, or whatever…
I’m having a hard time seeing the difference between it all, but I am not familiar with it all. I find it interesting how conspiracy theories are sometimes talked about by some people, and I thought this might be an interesting case in how certain things might at one point in time not be seen as true, and often even ridiculed, and later on not.
The client list conspiracy theory is the idea that there’s a list of people that Epstein would send prostitutes to or who would partake in his sex crimes. The black book is his list of contacts. Because Epstein definitely committed sex crimes with his friends, and all his friends are in the book, it’s almost certain that some of the people in the book committed sex crimes with Epstein. But it’s also almost certain that some of the people in the book did not commit any sex crimes with Epstein. From wikipedia
This all becomes clearer if you read with an actual desire to understand.
I personally find it implausible but not extremely that Epstein kept a written record of his co-conspirators, but it’s also quite obvious that all of the currently publicly available documents are not that.
“This all becomes clearer if you read with an actual desire to understand.”
I am trying to understand, albeit it with a very limited attention span and desire to read details about the case. I have tried to focus on what seems to “officially” be acknowledged, like the black book you mentioned and I read about in the wiki page.
I don’t care at first what other people (like the investigateve reporter Brown, or Maxwell, or whatever people have said stuff about it) have to say about it, precisely because I am trying to understand (in my way).
Thank you for your comments though, they helped me a bit. I have now lost interest to further read about this case.
The Epstein conspiracy theory says that he was openly supplying underage girls and prostitutes to the rich and famous, secretly recording them on his private island, and blackmailing them for hundreds of millions of dollars. He was then murdered to avoid powerful men being implicated.
None of this has been proved. His girlfriend G.Maxwell went to prison, but no one else has been charged. The Epstein files did not prove any criminal activity. No recordings or blackmail payments have been found. His suicide was very suspicious, but remains unsolved.
Epstein did not really get off easy. Wikipedia says: “Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.” Maybe he deserved worse for sex trafficking, but that was never proved.
Roger Schlafly: Your description of his prison sentence is incomplete. His incarceration was very mild. He was housed in a minimum security detention center from which he was allowed to regularly leave for work release. His incarceration appears to have done little to prevent future crimes as women have alleged that he sexually abused them during this period.
Aside: In keeping with Andrew’s discussion of academics complicity, Epstein’s lawyer testified that he was granted work release so that he could continue his scientific research(!!!?)
Could you elaborate on what you mean by: “The Epstein files did not prove any criminal activity.” It is true that they did not prove any criminal activity in the sense that nobody in the US has been criminally convicted, but people in Europe have been criminally charged and legal proceedings are ongoing.
Yes, Epstein’s incarceration was mild. But compare it to the punishment of others with similar guilty pleas.
There have been some European investigations. The biggest Epstein fallout, as far as I know, is England’s Prince Andrew being kicked out of the royal family. Others also had their reputations damaged. But I do not know of any crimes being proved.
Roger Schlafly: (For some reason, I can’t apply directly to your July 2 post).
The consequences for the former Prince Andrew have gone beyond reputational damage: he was arrested in February 19, 2025 and briefly incarcerated. As far as I can tell, police have been tight lipped where things stand, and i don’t know enough about the UK criminal justice system to say what to expect moving forward.
Can you direct me to some guilty pleas for crimes similar to Epstein’s? I’m not aware that other people have gotten lesser sentences for similar crimes.
Y’all clearly don’t spend that much time in the podcastosphere/manosphere.
That space has its own Epstein narrative that’s much more elaborate than anything being discussed here. In that ecosystem, the dominant conspiracy theory is the firm belief that Epstein was an intelligence asset, usually framed as working for Mossad (sometimes also the CIA). The supposed blackmail operation gets expanded into a geopolitical plot, and people point to things like his emails about “pizza” or “grape soda” as coded messages, which then get folded into the broader pizzagate mythology. None of that has evidentiary support, of course, but there are tons of podcasts where these views are accepted facts. The Epstein drama gets absorbed into pre‑existing conspiracy belief network and overlaps seamlessly with aliens, Anthony Fauci, ivermectin, the lab leak, the Charlie Kirk assassination, and the 9/11 Inside Job.
Whitney Webb
Ian Campbell
Joe Rogan
Daryl Cooper
Tucker Carlson
Alex Jones
Brett Weinstein/Heather Heying
Russell Brand
Jordan Peterson
Jimmy Dore
And Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are pretty adjacent even if they don’t endorse all of those beliefs.
That’s right, none of that has been demonstrated. We know he had sexual relations with a 17.5 year old prostitute. Beyond that, the crimes are all unproven speculation. Epstein has become a boogeyman.
Roger:
In America we refer to someone who is 17.5 years old as a 17-year-old. Also, children who are sexually abused are not usually referred to as “prostitutes.”
Thank you Andrew.
Lots more has been “demonstrated” and pretending that the evidence in the Maxwell case, all of the settlements and the testimony given by many victims more than amply “demonstrates” what happened. What we don’t really know at this point is how much blackmailing was done.
The minimization still happening at this point in time is shocking.
Not only did Krauss not follow his brother’s creepy advice but he seems to have doubled down and gone full-on “culture-wars”. Last year he edited a book titled “The War on Science” which contains amongst other things, a compilation of chapters by individuals with grudges, mostly against Universities but also other organizations like scientific societies, for admonishing them (or in some cases reprimanding, disciplining or dismissing them) for various unsavoury behaviours. Examples are serious sexual harassment, sexism, overt racism, contemptuous behaviours against indigenous cultures. Other culture wars chapters attack the use of non-binary definitions of human sex… altogether a litany of culture-wars nit-picks wrapped within an “attack on free speech” package which (according to 2025 Krauss) is supposed to constitute a “war on science”.
Curiously around 10 years ago Krauss wrote the foreword of a book also titled “The War on Science” by Shawn Otto (2016) which describes what one can only call the war on science; i.e. attempts to subvert teaching of evolution, vaccination safety and efficacy misrepresentation, climate science denial, misrepresentation of fluoridation safety and efficacy, attacks on the efficacy of the scientific enterprise and so on.
So what happened between 2016 Krauss and 2025 Krauss to produce such a stunning flip in his scientific worldview? In 2018 he was reprimanded by his Uni (ASU) for sexual misconduct and resigned in 2019.
Chris:
Yes, we discussed Krauss’s “war on science” book last month. It’s a bad sign that his book leads off with a stupid quotation from Lawrence Summers!
I have another post in preparation speculating on the change since 10 years earlier.
Yes, we did. Incidentally I reread a couple of the chapters recently including Sokal’s and Coyne’s. Sokal seem to have misread the Nature editorial he’s using as the basis for his critique which renders the specific critique (about binary/non-binay nature of sex) flawed. Otherwise one might enjoy reading Sokal’s article for it’s full-on “and another thing!”/”slippery slope” rush.
I won’t comment more on that since you’ve got a post about the book in preparation. A number of the chapters seem to have been published by their authors previously elsewhere (including Sokal’s and Coyne’s) and maybe that’s why the book lacks a sort of coheren’t structure. Where I think it’s a problem is that alhough quite a few of the complaints described in the book seem like “nothingburgers” to me (especially in the light of current real attacks on science), compiling together a bunch of nothingburgers can make it appear like something of a crusade – which is most likely the point!
Chris:
I’d also say that Krauss doesn’t seem to be much of a careful thinker. He’s written lots and lots of books and, at this point, he’s pretty much just going with vibes.
A few years ago he published a book, The Physics of Climate Change, which has blurbs from Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky, and . . . Ian McEwen! McEwen has always seemed like a reasonable sort, but endorsements from Dawkins and Chomsky, that’s not such a good sign. I guess what these endorsements show, more than anything else, is that Krauss is, or was, well connected, in the same way that Cass Sunstein was buddies with Henry Kissinger. Celebrities stick together.
I read the book, it’s actually quite good. He goes through the history of climate science and explains how we know what we know about greenhouse gases and global warming.
Anon:
Interesting. I’d just assumed that anything endorsed by both Dawkins and Chomsky would be pretty bad, but perhaps that’s too crude a heuristic for me to be using here!