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 Aug 18, 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

Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College
Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College 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
John Martinis: The Nobel Physicist Behind Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling 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
Fermilab’s Scott Dodelson on Cosmology’s Crisis 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
Annie Jacobsen: How One Lab Leak Ends the World in 6 Days 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
We Built Something We Can’t Control | A Warning from Top AI Safety Expert 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
Michael Shermer: The Only Skeptic on the Alien Task Force
Michael Shermer: The Only Skeptic on the Alien Task Force Jul 15, 2026 4058 Michael Shermer just joined the White House’s new UAP task force alongside Avi Loeb. He also has a $1,000 bet with Loeb that we won’t find aliens by 2030. Both things are true. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, author of Truth, and one of the most consistent voices for evidence-based thinking in public life. He was
400K Subscribers Asked Me Anything. The Answers Got Weird.
400K Subscribers Asked Me Anything. The Answers Got Weird. Jul 11, 2026 7434 400,000 of you showed up for physics with no compromises, so I did something different for the milestone. No highlight reel. I took your hardest questions live and answered them, then got honest about the part of this job nobody asks about: the discipline behind running a serious science podcast. We get into why clocks didn't tick differently in the early universe, what it actually means that the
Top Astronomer: UFOs Are STILL Here
Top Astronomer: UFOs Are STILL Here Jul 7, 2026 3943 Astrophysicist Beatriz Villarroel found point-like flashes in sky photographs taken before a single satellite existed. Nine of them lit up simultaneously on one 1950s plate. Nothing in orbit could have made them — because nothing was in orbit yet. Beatriz Villarroel leads VASCO, which scanned 600 million objects across 70 years of photographic sky surveys hunting for things that appear, then vani
Nobel Economist: The Market That Lets People Die
Nobel Economist: The Market That Lets People Die Jun 30, 2026 4907 A Nobel laureate in economics argues the bans we pass to protect our morals are quietly killing people and the data backs him up. Why the line between a market we allow and one we forbid is mostly an accident of disgust. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. My guest won the 2012 Nobel Prize for designing the systems that match kidney donors to patients who would otherwise
Dead Cows, Aliens, & Ghosts: How Kevin Knuth Connects Them All
Dead Cows, Aliens, & Ghosts: How Kevin Knuth Connects Them All Jun 26, 2026 1544 NASA physicist's UAP math survives. His conclusion doesn't. Mayim Bialik ran the razor first — Brian finishes the cut. Kevin Knuth is a tenured physicist, former NASA Ames researcher, and published exoplanet scientist who has done the actual math on the Nimitz encounter. We cover: - Whether Tic Tac flight physics rules out conventional explanations - Why the 60% cross-cultural abduction pa
Intelligent Design Theorist: AI Just Proved It Can’t Think Without Us
Intelligent Design Theorist: AI Just Proved It Can’t Think Without Us Jun 22, 2026 3899 Stephen C. Meyer has a PhD from Cambridge in the philosophy of science, and he thinks AI just handed him his strongest argument yet. I spent years pushing back on him. Today I laid three traps. Watch what he does with the third one. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Meyer is a philosopher of science and director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery

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