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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Big Bang Productions Inc. 608 Episodes Sep 17, 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

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
The Universe Didn’t Come From Nothing | The Peter McCormack Show
The Universe Didn’t Come From Nothing | The Peter McCormack Show Aug 28, 2026 6362 I joined Peter McCormack to dig into one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only seem to move in one direction? My answer might surprise you. Time may not be a fundamental feature of reality at all, and understanding space, matter, and energy still doesn't mean we understand the universe itself. We cover: - What may have existed before the Big Bang -
The Physics Reason AI Works When It Shouldn’t - #568
The Physics Reason AI Works When It Shouldn’t - #568 Aug 25, 2026 4673 The same mathematics that explains why a fridge magnet sticks to your refrigerator also explains why neural networks work when they have no right to. His group did the calculation. Nobody else had. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Goldenfeld is a Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences who s
Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College - #567
Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College - #567 Aug 18, 2026 3626 The system that produces the world’s most important discoveries runs on metrics that nobody agrees on, odds that would stop most people, and mentorship that sometimes looks like cruelty in blue ink. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Lipomi is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Rochester and the author of Science Nonficti
John Martinis: The Nobel Physicist Behind Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling - #566
John Martinis: The Nobel Physicist Behind Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling - #566 Aug 11, 2026 2963 John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving macroscopic quantum tunneling is real. Less than a year later he’s telling why he left Google’s quantum computing team to start over. Subscribe if you want the physics and the politics of building the impossible. Martinis is the co-founder of Colab and one of the physicists who proved ordinary quantum rules apply to macroscopic systems
Fermilab’s Scott Dodelson on Cosmology’s Crisis - #565
Fermilab’s Scott Dodelson on Cosmology’s Crisis - #565 Aug 4, 2026 2444 Scott Dodelson spent ten years on the Dark Energy Survey testing the standard model of cosmology. It passed and missed by 2.5 sigma. The Director of Fermilab’s Cosmic Physics Division on why the theory he helped build may be wrong, why nobody can find dark matter, and what it takes to change a scientific consensus. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Dodelson is Director
Faith & the Physicist: Aliens, Astrobiology, String Theory, and the Search for Meaning
Faith & the Physicist: Aliens, Astrobiology, String Theory, and the Search for Meaning Jul 31, 2026 4292 Two theoretical physicists helped design landmark surveys of 1,600+ scientists on the deepest unsolved questions in physics — and found almost no consensus at all. From string theory's shockingly low support to physicists admitting their models run on "belief," this episode exposes the faith hiding inside science. Adam Frank (University of Rochester astrophysicist and astrobiologist) and Niaye
Annie Jacobsen: How One Lab Leak Ends the World in 6 Days - #564
Annie Jacobsen: How One Lab Leak Ends the World in 6 Days - #564 Jul 28, 2026 6548 Annie Jacobsen on BIOLOGICAL WAR: how a single lab leak could take us from outbreak to anarchy in six days — and why bio may be scarier than nuclear. WIN a signed copy of BIOLOGICAL WAR or NUCLEAR WAR, a meteorite & more — enter free: https://briankeating.com/annie (Join there for the free Biological War Scenario Simulation and Source Dossier + early access to my next Nobel-laureate interview.)
We Built Something We Can’t Control | A Warning from Top AI Safety Expert - #563
We Built Something We Can’t Control | A Warning from Top AI Safety Expert - #563 Jul 21, 2026 4776 If anyone builds superintelligent AI before we know how to control it, everyone dies. Nate Soares wrote the book on why that’s not a metaphor. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Soares runs the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and co-wrote If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies with Eliezer Yudkowsky. The first word in that title is if. That matters. His argument is

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