Episode Transcript: #938 - Lawrence Krauss

Great. Great to be here.

I have been enjoying your latest book, but I do have to tell you, I think you broke my brain with gauge symmetry.

I had to go over that about 30 or 40 times to try to figure out what that means and how that works.

Well, it's amazing. You did. It breaks our brains. I put it in there in spite of the fact that it's hard.

That part is hard, but it is so central to the way we think about the world nowadays that I thought,

I got to try and explain it. I broke my own brain trying to think of ways to explain it.

I figured people wouldn't devote as much time as you did to doing it.

It's so subtle that even physicists have a hard time in some ways grasping the implications of it.

But it is so central the way we think about the universe.

If I don't include it for the inquiring mind like you, then I feel bad.

It is so baffling.

But you know what? It's one of the things that when I write books, I write, I do most things for myself in a way.

And in every book I write, I usually learn something. And always when you're explaining stuff,

you suddenly, most teachers say the first time they understand anything is when they teach it.

And gauge symmetry, I never thought of really how to explain it.

And I tried to explain to my editor, which was great because she didn't know any science

and she kept not understanding it.

And then I came up with this explanation with all these chess boards, which is still subtle.

But I realized afterwards it was kind of neat because when I developed this explanation for gauge symmetry,