Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Big Bang Productions Inc.
  • 4.7 (1.1K)
  • Natural Sciences
  • Updated Weekly

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

  1. 1d ago

    Wharton AI Researcher: If AI Froze Today, It Would Still Rewrite Work

    Forecasters gave AI under 2% odds of helping solve a millennium-level math problem by September 2026. It happened. Ethan Mollick has been measuring what AI actually does to real work with field experiments, not forecasts, and his answer is not what most people expect. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Mollick runs the Generative AI Lab at Wharton. He is the author of Co-Intelligence and Coexistence, his new book on navigating a world where AI tools are already good enough to change almost all intellectual work, even if progress stopped today. The conversation covers the jagged frontier: why AI solved a math olympiad before it could count the Rs in strawberry, what it means that roles blur when everyone on a team starts using AI, and what four human advantages still hold an edge when a model can already write a publishable paper. It also covers what happens when your kids tell you that you sound like Claude. What you’ll hear: What centaur, cyborg, and conjurer work actually look like in a real academic lab Why brainstorming was considered a bad idea shortly after it was invented and what that means for working with AI Why Mollick reduced em dashes in his new book and what that tells you about living alongside these models What co-evolution might look like if the escalator keeps moving “If we just had the models we have right now, that’s enough to change almost all of human work in the next ten years. It’s good enough.” — Ethan Mollick CHAPTERS 00:00  AI writes good papers now. Taste is the weak spot. 03:14  The jagged frontier: math olympiad gold, but not the Rs in strawberry 06:30  Deep knowledge, wide knowledge, taste, and agency 09:44  Escalator or eschaton? 16:02  Does AI simulate wisdom or actually have it? 23:46  The labs keep AI in English. Here is why. 32:28  Roles blur. Everyone does everything now. 36:42  My kids say I sound like Claude. They might be right. 38:12  AI found errors in his sources that his fact-checkers missed 46:34  What to do before giving a child access to AI Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Enter the debate: https://briankeating.com/ai Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guest: Ethan Mollick on Twitter/X: https://x.com/emollick?lang=en Coexistence (book and site): https://co-existence.ai/ One Useful Thing (Substack): https://www.oneusefulthing.org/ My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #EthanMollick #AI #artificialintelligence #AItools #briankeating #intotheimpossible #AIagents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Wharton AI Researcher: If AI Froze Today, It Would Still Rewrite Work

  2. Oct 14

    Are UFOs Alien Tech? Avi Loeb vs Michael Shermer

    Is there alien technology in our skies, or just birds, balloons and bad video? Two members of the White House UAP Science Advisory Council face off LIVE. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who chairs the council, makes the case for searching. Michael Shermer, the council skeptic Loeb picked himself, says show me the evidence. They have $1,000 riding on whether non-human technology is confirmed by 2030. Get all my best ET content: https://big-bang.kit.com/bvyt We'll cover the redacted Pentagon videos, Loeb's new papers on tracking objects over Nevada, the claims from David Grusch, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Eric Weinstein, and what evidence would change each of their minds. Avi Loeb: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/ Michael Shermer: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/08/opinion/aliens-uap-ufo-videos-trump/ Subscribe to The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Sponsorships and speaking: https://BrianKeating.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Are UFOs Alien Tech? Avi Loeb vs Michael Shermer

  3. Oct 13

    Adam Grant: Don't Trust Your Gut. Test It.

    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 connection has been hiding in plain sight for a century, and that most of what people do to build relationships is either backwards or unnecessary. The episode covers why the highest sign of chemistry between people is enjoying your disagreements rather than avoiding them, why remote work produces boreout rather than burnout, and why your first impression of someone is a snapshot of one situation that may not represent the whole person. It also covers burstiness, confident humility, and why universities have survived COVID, AI, and every other disruption that was supposed to end them. What you’ll hear: Why the pendulum clock experiment from 1665 explains what happens when people stop trying to force a connection What the HiPPO effect does to a team and why the highest paid person’s opinion kills creative ideas Why Grant ran experiments on university fundraising callers that tripled their revenue with a five-minute intervention What desirability bias is and why Grant thinks it is more dangerous than confirmation bias Why Grant A/B tested the subtitle of his own book and what “relationships” signaled that “connections” did not What Grant and Brian agree on about false certainty and thinking in conditional probabilities “The highest sign of chemistry between people is not agreeing with them. It’s enjoying your disagreements.” — Adam Grant CHAPTERS 00:00 Vibing is real. Your brainwaves prove it. 05:30 Task conflict vs. relationship conflict 07:40 Who is actually in charge: parents or infants? 10:14 Burstiness: the remote work pattern that works 14:24 Don’t trust your gut. Test it. 19:34 Confident humility: the essence of a good scientist 21:32 Desirability bias is worse than confirmation bias 29:00 Zoom fatigue is boreout, not burnout 30:02 The A/B test that killed “relationships” 34:14 Don’t disbelieve what can’t be falsified Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Enter the debate: https://briankeating.com/ai Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guest: Adam Grant website: https://adamgrant.net/ Vibe (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GPHPNZ14 Adam Grant on Twitter/X: https://x.com/adammgrant My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #AdamGrant #loneliness #remotework #psychology #briankeating #intotheimpossible #Vibe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Adam Grant: Don't Trust Your Gut. Test It.

  4. Oct 9

    Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence?

    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 the University of Louisville who has spent more than a decade on the AI control problem. Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist who studies how minds, biological and artificial, build a model of reality. We cover: why a perpetual safety device may be as impossible as perpetual motion, what happens when AI research automates itself (Roman puts it at 28 percent today), whether nuclear deterrence is the right analogy, who really benefits when AI labs ask to be regulated, and why consciousness may have nothing to do with whether AI is safe. Being conscious does not make you kind. 00:00 Simulation theory meets certain doom 03:25 Is P(doom) even a real number? 06:05 Why a simulated world still matters 09:26 Should we have skipped the Trinity test? 13:04 Did nukes actually keep the peace? 17:32 Why haven't we wiped out the spiders? 22:35 Is AI doom falsifiable? 25:48 Why a self-driving car isn't the threat 29:27 Roman's 28% automation number 34:46 Intelligence is not agency 39:20 Can superintelligence be proven safe? 42:40 Who wins when AI labs ask for regulation? 47:45 Does consciousness make AI safer? 53:48 Would a perfect mind discover God? 58:37 The Tower of Babel, read backward 1:03:52 Can you control a mind a million times smarter? 1:04:43 The narrow AI path Roman wants instead 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @plinz 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @romanyam 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/ai 🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu 🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon: get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: patreon.com/drbriankeating ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: youtube.com/@drbriankeating 📚 My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un 🌐 More: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @BrianKeating 📚 Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com/ ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence?

  5. Oct 7

    "I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]

    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 Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We cover: why ice under the South Pole is clearer than anything a lab can make, the 2,600 TeV event that dwarfs the LHC, why IceCube sees more energy in cosmic neutrinos than in gamma rays, how neutrinos crossing the universe test quantum gravity, and the quark he refused to believe in. Physics is a miserable career unless you are obsessed by it. Recorded in 2022, before IceCube detected neutrinos from our own galaxy. Learn from Nobel Prize winners, and you could win a meteorite: Please join my mailing list here 👉 briankeating.com/x Chapters 00:00 Physics is a miserable career, unless 02:54 A textbook written before the W was found 06:11 Breaking into Lemaître's computer at night 10:57 Do scientists owe the public anything? 13:55 Deep in debt with zero neutrinos 19:40 The persuasion nobody teaches scientists 20:15 Why it could only be the South Pole 23:20 Learn physics by doing, not by courses 26:00 How to turn Antarctic ice into a telescope 31:30 2,600 TeV: far beyond the LHC 35:00 More energy in neutrinos than gamma rays 40:00 Tracing ghost particles to NGC 1068 46:00 Testing quantum gravity with neutrinos 1:01:00 Ten times the ice for the same price 1:07:08 What he would leave his descendants 1:11:19 What his generation should be proud of 1:12:51 The quark he refused to believe in 1:17:09 Imagination can trump intelligence 📺 Watch my most popular videos: Neil Turok Believes Physics Is In Crisis Nobel Prizewinner Frank Wilczek Stephen Wolfram vs. Eric Weinstein Sir Roger Penrose: Nobel Prize in Physics, Black Holes and More Noam Chomsky: Consciousness, Elon Musk, and More Sabine Hossenfelder Avi Loeb: UFOs and UAPs Neil deGrasse Tyson Follow me to ask questions of my guests: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @DrBrianKeating 📝 Mailing list: briankeating.com/mailing_list ✍️ Detailed blog posts: briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: briankeating.com/podcast A production of imagination.ucsd.edu Executive Producer: Brian Keating Producer P.G.A: Stuart Volkow Editing: Lucas Scheiblich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    "I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]

  6. Oct 5

    Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI's Payoff Is NOT What You Think

    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 science should tolerate, the one rule that would end algorithmic outrage without censoring anyone, the accounting trick behind billionaire wealth, and why AI's path is a design decision, not destiny. We are still a democracy. Perhaps not for long. Chapters: 0:00 Can science survive without democracy?t 2:08 Why a Nobel laureate left Berkeley for Chinat 3:58 What Galileo knew that Kepler didn'tt 5:12 Is peer review undemocratic?t 7:41 The optimal amount of scientific heresyt 10:06 Science isn't slowing. So what broke?t 12:06 The design choice behind echo chamberst 14:49 One rule that would fix social mediat 19:26 Should Elon Musk have this much wealth?t 23:49 AI is a design choice, not destinyt ——— 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt 🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating 🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: / drbriankeating ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: / @drbriankeating 📚 My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpAt Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFut Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9Ut Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Unt 🌐 More: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: / briankeating 📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI's Payoff Is NOT What You Think

  7. Oct 3

    AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It)

    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 I'm seeing in my own classroom as term begins, why cognitive offloading scares me more than Terminators, and the one thing AI still can't do without us. AI belongs in your hands as a thinking partner, never the primary creator. Chapters: 00:00 Mike Slater introduces Brian Keating (cosmologist, not cosmetologist) 00:37 Why AI is the Tower of Babel — the city and the tower 02:05 The double-edged sword: new drugs vs. super viruses 02:57 Altman, Amodei, Musk — "they become like gods to us" 03:42 "Regulate us, take us over" — who really wants that 04:23 A scientist weighs progress: "I'm an accelerationist" 05:19 AI as a curiosity amplifier, not a shortcut 06:04 First day of class at UC San Diego — the war over AI 07:22 Thinking partner, not primary creator — and the nuclear analogy 08:20 Cognitive offloading — how many phone numbers do you remember? 09:17 The worldview of the people running AI 10:35 Why I'm not a doomer — and what to actually do (local models) ——— 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt 🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeatin... 🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: / drbriankeating ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: / @drbriankeating 📚 My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un 🌐 More: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: /briankeating 📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It)

  8. Sep 30

    Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One

    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 that outpaces wisdom fragments the people building it. The Fermi paradox offers the grimmer version: civilizations that reach the capacity to blow themselves up typically do. Robert Wright has been watching this longer than almost anyone, he was reporting on neural networks in 1983, and his conclusion is not that the machines will fail the test. It is that we will. Wright’s book argues that superintelligence is not the danger and AI alignment is not the solution unless it comes with a moral advance. Passing the God test requires something no lab can ship. What you’ll hear: -Why Wright thinks p(doom) fails as a scientific concept -What the binding of Isaac and the Tower of Babel have in common as moral tests -Why global cooperation is the only thing that can actually slow AI down -What Lee Smolin’s cosmological natural selection has to do with the Fermi paradox -What Wright thinks Eastern and Western enlightenment have in common and why it matters now -Whether there is a role for humanity inside the global brain or only for the machines “We face the kind of test that God would give.” — Robert Wright CHAPTERS 00:00 The man who interviewed Hinton in 1983 05:04 The God test and its two meanings 08:36 Religious faith in technological progress 14:10 Hinton then versus Hinton now 19:38 Why slowing AI down requires international cooperation 26:02 How LLMs reverse-engineer the meaning of words 32:08 Brian's Einstein test: can Claude have a happy thought? 40:06 AGI is impossible. Here is why Brian thinks that. 47:04 The Fermi paradox as a moral filter 51:10 What passing the God test actually looks like Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu Enter the debate: briankeating.com/ai Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guest: The God Test (book): https://thegodtest.net Robert Wright on Twitter/X: https://x.com/RWrighter My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #RobertWright #AIalignment #superintelligence #FermiParadox #briankeating #intotheimpossible #AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One
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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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