Think like a physicist. Wonder like a human. Into the Impossible is where Cosmic Conversations happen — uniting Nobel Prize winners, iconoclasts, authors, and technologists to explore reality’s deepest questions. From AI to aliens, from biophysics to the brain, from the cosmos to the multiverse, Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego covers it all.
If you’ve ever asked What’s out there? or What’s next?, this is where curiosity meets clarity.
Learn to think like this. 🎙 Full episodes, notes & more: briankeating.com/podcast
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Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb details new observations of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, revealing its unusual mass, trajectory, and chemical composition. He discusses potential links to the historic Wow! Signal, proposes a global UN response for future interstellar visitors, and critiques scientific dogmatism that hinders discovery. The conversation also touches on the geopolitical race for extraterrestrial life, particularly China's Mars missions, and the ethical considerations of communicating with alien intelligence.
Get started with 1 month free of Superhuman today, using my link: https://try.sprh.mn/briankeating Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Is AI our partner in evolution, or is it a harbinger of our downfall? In this episode of Into the Impossible, I sit down with two brilliant minds to explore the current and future relationship between artificial intelligence, human evolution, and creativity. Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a leading AI researcher, and Be...
Delve into the life and groundbreaking work of Lord Kelvin, from his pioneering concept of absolute zero and the Kelvin temperature scale to his early academic success and lasting legacy at the University of Glasgow. The episode also critically examines his scientific misjudgments, such as his famous clash with Darwin over Earth's age, later resolved by radioactivity. Discover his extensive inventions in telecommunications and early electric lighting, showcasing his dual role as a brilliant physicist and astute businessman.
Get 3 months off the annual plan and start learning faster at shortform.com/impossible In this episode, Steven Pinker unpacks how common knowledge shapes everything from why rational people can’t agree to disagree to why markets boom and bust. We explore the risks of falsifying expert claims, the power of social norms, and whether civilization is held together by truths—or by the fictions we all agree to share. — Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 00:58 When common knowledge is wrong 02:37 The role of c...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Brian Keating sits in the guest chair on Julian Dorey's podcast. This fascinating conversation dives deep into the heart of science, skepticism, and the culture wars swirling around them. Together, Brian and Julian tackle everything from wild theories about NASA, the South Pole, and the moon landing, to the challenges of scientific gatekeeping, the allure of conspiracy thinking, and the importance—and limitatio...
James sits down once again with cosmologist Brian Keating—longtime friend of the show and author of Into the Impossible: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner. In this candid conversation, they challenge each other’s views on focus, curiosity, and the trade-offs of staying in your lane. Brian shares behind-the-scenes lessons from interviewing Nobel Prize winners, the thinking behind his new “Keating Test” for AI, and why communication matters as much as discovery in science. This episode isn’t about s...
Get Dr. Brian Keating’s NEW Book for Only 0.99! This week only: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN8DH6SX?ref_=pe_93986420_775043100 For over a century, cosmologists have believed that the universe began a single fiery moment. The Big Bang. But what if that story is incomplete? Or what if it's even wrong? My guest today, Professor Niayesh Afshordi, is a professor of astrophysics at the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo. He and his colleague Bill Halpern argue that the real battle in ...
Get my new book Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner for just 99 cents while the sale lasts: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 What if your life wasn’t real—not metaphorically, but literally? That’s the premise my guest today has been exploring for years. Rizwan Virk, MIT graduate, gaming entrepreneur, and author of The Simulation Hypothesis, believes that physics, computing, and even ancient wisdom traditions point to the s...
Buy my new book Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner for just 99 cents for a limited time only https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Fred Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang”—but he hated the theory it described. Instead, he championed the steady state universe, helped uncover the stellar origin of the elements, and gave us the immortal phrase: “We are stardust.” This video explores Hoyle’s brilliance and contradictions: Why he mocked the Bi...
Get My New Book, Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, for Only $ 0.99! This week only: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U David Deutsch offers his insights into the physics that will impact our future, challenging our new technologies, such as AGI and the development of synthetic humans, as depicted in movies. Join us for this fascinating discussion as we go INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE. KEY TAKEAWAYS 00:00:00 – 00:00:39 Could machines experience thoughts and sensations like humans? 00:00:45 – 00:01:46 Deutsch argues su...
Get my My new book, Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner -- https://a.co/d/hi50U9U It's just 99¢ on Kindle for launch week ONLY. It’s the perfect companion to this conversation—lessons in thinking clearly, staying curious, and pushing past conventional wisdom from my conversations with 22 Nobel Prize winners! Brian Keating sits down with Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb and renowned skeptic Michael Shermer to dissect the latest enigma sweeping through our solar system—3I/ATLAS. • What makes 3I/ATLAS e...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 In a sweeping conversation drawn from his collaboration with Stephen Hawking, Thomas Hertog explores the radical “no-boundary” theory—a vision of the cosmos with no singular beginning, evolving laws of physics, and a past that isn’t fixed until observed. Rejecting the untestable multiverse, Hertog and Hawking built a fully quantum cosmology that embeds the observer within the equations, predicting inflation a...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 We talk with Ben Shapiro about his new book “Lions and Scavengers” and how we each have a lion and a scavenger inside of us. Today’s society is shaped by lions who build great things, while the scavengers try to tear them down. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional resources: Ben Shapiro’s NEW Book Lions and Scavengers: https://www.amazon.com/Lions-...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Could an AI physicist soon out-innovate Einstein? In this exciting interdisciplinary exploration, UC San Diego’s Rose Yu dismantles the romantic myth of genius-driven science and instead offers a thrilling look at how AI could become not just a computational tool, but a genuine partner in discovery. Rose draws from her pioneering work in traffic forecasting, pandemic modeling, and high-energy physics to show ...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 David Deutsch just exposed something shocking about modern science. Most quantum theories aren't actually science at all. They're just miracles disguised as explanations. When you ask how quantum entanglement works, most interpretations by popular scientists basically reduce to "magic happens." That's not science, that's giving up on our understanding of reality. David Deutsch is a quantum physicist at Oxford, ...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 — Arthur Brooks has just done the unthinkable. He’s shattered one of the most enduring myths in both science and society with the precision of a physicist and the insight of a seasoned psychologist. We’re talking about the belief that our minds peak in our thirties and only decline from there. Well, it turns out this belief isn’t rooted in physics but in flawed psychology. Worse, this myth is holding us back ...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 What if the most successful theory in science… doesn't actually explain anything? In this episode of Into the Impossible, I talk with physicist and author Adam Becker, who wrote What Is Real?, a stunning exploration of quantum mechanics, its messy philosophical roots, and the long-ignored questions about what the theory really says about reality. We dig deep into a paradox at the heart of modern physics: quan...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Does free will exist? It's a question that's haunted philosophers for centuries. But physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has a provocative answer that might just disturb you. She says free will doesn't exist. Everything is determined by the laws of physics. But here's the paradox that's fascinated me. I've talked to Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Robert Sapolsky, all brilliant minds who agree that free will is an illusion....
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Why aren't whales building rockets? They have bigger brains than we do after all. In this episode with Stephen Wolfram, we talk about why more brainpower doesn't always mean more understanding, and how neural architecture faces physical constraints. Stephen Wolfram says even super intelligent AIs may hit hard computational limits. In our conversation today, we explore why intelligence has a ceiling, and how ide...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 In this captivating conversation, we dive deep into the cosmos with renowned cosmologist, podcaster, and UC San Diego professor Dr. Brian Keating. Joined by Mike Misha and Xinghui, Brian takes us on a journey from the childhood wonder inspired by the Moon to the high-altitude peaks of Chile and the frigid expanse of the South Pole, where he's helped pioneer the development of cutting-edge telescopes aimed at un...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 In a sweeping conversation sparked by his new book The War on Science, Lawrence Krauss charts how well-intentioned campus DEI bureaucracies, politicized funding mandates, and “language-as-violence” taboos are eroding the core scientific virtues of open inquiry and empirical scepticism, while drawing historical parallels from Lysenkoism to today’s hiring rubrics and challenging listeners to defend freedom of t...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Is the universe fine-tuned for life, or is it just a lucky accident? Could the multiverse explain why our universe is so perfectly suited for life? And how much can the fundamental constants change before life becomes impossible? Today, I’m joined by Fred Adams, a theoretical physicist from the University of Michigan. Fred works in the general area of theoretical astrophysics with a focus on the study of star...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 What if the future tech billionaires keep promising us isn’t the answer, but part of the problem? In this episode of Into the Impossible, I talk with Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever, about the big dreams coming out of Silicon Valley—especially when it comes to AI and the future of humanity. We take a hard look at the idea that AI is going to fix everything, launch us into space, and solve all o...
In this episode, I sit down with Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb to explore his provocative new article analyzing the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS — a visitor from beyond our solar system that might not be natural. 🛰️ We dive into his recent article on Medium https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-the-interstellar-object-3i-atlas-alien-technology-b59ccc17b2e3 and get into: • The strange anomalies in 3I/ATLAS’s orbit, size, and speed 🌌 • How the Dark Forest Hypothesis could change the search for intell...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 What drives someone to keep exploring the universe after a lifelong career in cosmology and 500 podcast episodes? In this milestone episode, I finally take the mic solo to answer that and other questions—from the origin of the podcast during the pandemic to why I'm still obsessed with cosmology, teaching, and yes, even faculty meetings (sometimes). I open up about the childlike curiosity that fuels my work an...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 In this episode, we’re diving into the untold story of one of science’s greatest icons: Galileo Galilei. You might know him as the father of modern astronomy—the man with the telescope who challenged the universe. But forget the dusty textbook legend. This episode peels back the curtain to reveal Galileo as a cunning innovator, unapologetic monopolist, and the original scientific entrepreneur. Settle in for a...
What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning? What if our universe is just one in a vast cosmic ocean of universes, and we have the evidence to prove it? In this episode of Into the Impossible, I’m joined by theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton to explore one of the most provocative ideas in modern cosmology: the multiverse is not only real—it’s testable. Mersini, author of Before the Big Bang, walks us through her bold predictions about the structure of the cosmos, including the mysterious...
What if everything we know about the universe’s expansion is wrong? David Wiltshire offers a radical perspective on cosmic acceleration and dark energy, proposing that both might be illusions created by the varying passage of time in different regions of the universe. Wiltshire challenges the foundations of modern cosmology with his innovative Timescape model. We discuss the foundations of Einstein's theory of relativity, examining how time behaves differently in regions of high and low matter d...
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 This episode, hosted by Brian Keating—Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego—delves into one of the most fascinating and underappreciated stories at the intersection of beauty, brilliance, and invention. Today, we step away from pure physics and astronomy to explore the remarkable life of Hedy Lamarr, an iconic Hollywood actress whose real genius lay not just on the silver screen, but...
In this exclusive interview, Professor Mario Jurić reveals how the Vera Rubin Observatory accidentally discovered 2,000 asteroids in just 10 hours while testing its capabilities on the distant Virgo Cluster—transforming humanity's asteroid discovery rate from 20,000 per year globally to potentially over one million annually with a single telescope. Jurić explains how VRO's revolutionary multi-messenger astronomy capabilities will detect dark matter's effects and light simultaneously, automatical...
