Home Podcasts Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Big Bang Productions Inc. 608 Episodes Oct 13, 2026

Into the Impossible is a podcast hosted by Brian Keating, a Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego. The show features conversations with Nobel Prize winners, authors, and technologists exploring deep questions about the universe, from AI to aliens, biophysics to the multiverse. It aims to unite curiosity with clarity, covering topics that range from cosmology to the brain. Full episodes and notes are available at briankeating.com/podcast.

Episodes

Adam Grant: Don't Trust Your Gut. Test It.
Adam Grant: Don't Trust Your Gut. Test It. Oct 13, 2026 2655 When two people are vibing, their brainwaves synchronize and so do their heartbeats. That is not a metaphor. It is a measurable physiological event, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant has spent his career figuring out how to make it happen on purpose. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Grant’s new book Vibe is his seventh. It argues that the science of human con
Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence?
Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence? Oct 9, 2026 4448 Roman Yampolskiy says keeping a superintelligence safe forever is as impossible as building a perpetual motion machine. Joscha Bach says today's AI is more controllable than anyone expected, and that shutting it down would doom us anyway. 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/ai Roman Yampolskiy is a computer scientist at th
"I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]
"I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022] Oct 7, 2026 5266 The physicist who turned a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into a telescope says the most exciting moment of his career was not the discovery. It was the first atmospheric neutrino. Before that, he was deep in debt to NSF and his own university with no neutrino to show for it. Francis Halzen is principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and Hilldale and Gregory
Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI's Payoff Is NOT What You Think
Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI's Payoff Is NOT What You Think Oct 5, 2026 2119 Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu says AI's real productivity gain is an order of magnitude smaller than the industry claims. The bigger danger is not the machine. It is that a handful of people are deciding how it gets built. Daron Acemoglu is an MIT economist who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. We cover: why a Nobel chemist left Berkeley for China, the optimal amount of heresy
AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It)
AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It) Oct 3, 2026 808 The new Tower of Babel, and its builders are becoming like gods to us. The bigger threat isn't killer robots; it's how much of your own mind you've already handed over. I joined Mike Slater on Politics By Faith (The First) to talk about AI, faith, and the people building it. We cover: why Babel is always the city AND the tower, how the same AI that discovers drugs can build super viruses, what
Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One
Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One Sep 30, 2026 3615 The real AI alignment problem is not technical. It is moral. You cannot align a superintelligence to human values if humans cannot agree on what those values are, and you cannot get that agreement without a level of global cooperation we have never managed before. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. The Tower of Babel is the AI parable nobody is reading. Technology tha
Former NASA Physicist: The UAP Maneuver That Should Have Exploded
Former NASA Physicist: The UAP Maneuver That Should Have Exploded Sep 27, 2026 3782 A physics professor ran the energy budget on the Nimitz tic-tac. The maneuver needs about a thousand gigawatts, more than ten times every nuclear plant in the United States combined. Nothing we build survives its own waste heat at that scale. So what was flying? Kevin Knuth is a professor of physics at the University at Albany and a former NASA scientist who now applies Bayesian statistics to U
Carlo Rovelli: Free Will Is Real. Physics Can Prove It.
Carlo Rovelli: Free Will Is Real. Physics Can Prove It. Sep 22, 2026 3979 This episode is sponsored by Abacus AI agent: agent.abacus.ai/keating I fed it Carlo's recent papers and asked for the argument, the counterargument, and the evidence that would support or refute each side. Some of the questions and animations in this interview came out of that. It runs the top frontier models in one place, turns a dense PDF into a research report or a presentation with charts,
They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter
They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter Sep 17, 2026 7524 They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter One event in 220 days. That is what the search for dark matter looks like right now. In this episode I talk with Rick Gaitskell, professor of physics at Brown University and a leader on the LZ dark matter experiment, about what it takes to build a detector that can see almost nothing at all: seven tonnes of liquid xenon, a mile of rock
Dark Matter Has a Problem. So Does MOND.
Dark Matter Has a Problem. So Does MOND. Sep 15, 2026 935 For 50 years I taught my students that dark matter surrounds the Milky Way in a giant halo, or that Newton’s laws break down at low accelerations. The Gaia satellite just measured something that makes both of those answers uncomfortable. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Gaia has measured over a billion stars. What its third data release shows is that the outer rotatio
OpenAI’s Navier–Stokes Claim: Is This What AGI Looks Like? with Emad Mostaque
OpenAI’s Navier–Stokes Claim: Is This What AGI Looks Like? with Emad Mostaque Sep 9, 2026 4711 Did OpenAI just solve Navier–Stokes—and what would that actually mean for AGI? Emad Mostaque joins Brian Keating LIVE to examine the claimed breakthrough, what would count as a verified solution, and whether AI solving a major mathematical problem changes the debate about intelligence—or control. Watch my explainer about AI and the Navier-Stokes problem, including insights from Terry Tao https:
Roman Yampolskiy vs Emad Mostaque: I Was The Only Optimist - #569
Roman Yampolskiy vs Emad Mostaque: I Was The Only Optimist - #569 Sep 1, 2026 3500 The man who open-sourced the most-used AI image model in history sat down with the man who has spent a decade proving superintelligence cannot be controlled. Brian set up a debate. What emerged was something more unsettling than any debate. Roman Yampolskiy is the computer scientist who coined the term AI safety and author of AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable. Emad Mostaque is the

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