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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Written by: Big Bang Productions Inc.
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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© 2025 Big Bang Productions Inc. 719843 Nature & Ecology Physics Science
Episodes
  • The Universe Is Trying to Destroy All Matter

    The Universe Is Trying to Destroy All Matter
    Apr 21 2026
    An astrophysicist says the universe doesn't pull things down — it accelerates upward toward them. And that's one of the tamer claims in this conversation. Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi joins Brian to dismantle assumptions most physicists won't touch in public. Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi is a NASA researcher, Nova host, and author of Why Do We Exist, a unified framework spanning quantum fields to cosmology — and making a case for why imagination may be the universe's endgame. We cover: -why falling is the wrong way to think about gravity -what Hakeem discovered about heat flow while washing dishes that took decades to confirm -why humans sit at the exact logarithmic center of the universe, the calculation that puts 100,000 multicellular-life candidates in the Milky Way -why we'll likely never find any of them, and the one thing most people confuse for knowledge that Hakeem says is the most dangerous deception in society today. The universe makes life inevitable. It does not make multicellular life inevitable. Key Takeaways: 0:00 The Question That Breaks Physics 1:30 Meet Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi 3:10 The Earth Isn't Pulling You Down 6:00 Heat That Flows the Wrong Way 9:05 Why Electrons Run the Universe 11:15 The Most Dangerous Deception 14:20 We're at the Center of Everything 20:05 100,000 Worlds — And We'll Never Reach Them 22:30 Nine Realms: A Map of All Reality 25:25 When Two Realms Grind Each Other Apart 28:50 The Line Between Speculation and Science 33:20 The Hubble Tension War 40:40 How Long Until the Universe Destroys All Matter 44:05 Victor Glover and Why Representation Matters 48:10 What Happens to a Species That Stops Imagining 📬 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?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 📚 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: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating ✍️ 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
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    50 mins
  • Quantum Computers Aren't Useless. You Just Don't Know How to Use Them.

    Quantum Computers Aren't Useless. You Just Don't Know How to Use Them.
    Apr 20 2026
    Sabine Hossenfelder says quantum computers are only useful for breaking codes. She's wrong — and my undergraduates are building the proof. What's happening in my lab right now has nothing to do with cryptography, and everything to do with the future of AI. I'm a cosmologist at UC San Diego teaching undergraduates to build, program, and eventually launch quantum computers — possibly to the Moon via Artemis! We cover: why Sabine's code-breaking verdict misses the real story, how free tools like Quantum Rings are closing the education gap Sabine thinks is a hardware problem, why Q-Day just got moved up to 2029, what my students are actually doing with quantum computers in my lab, and why the next generation of quantum physicists won't need a billion-dollar facility to train. The bottleneck isn't the hardware. It's what we're teaching — and who we're teaching it to. Use my special link to get access to the course and apply for the summer 2026 internship: https://www.quantumrings.com/iti Watch Sabine’s video https://youtu.be/qV7hQEtr3ic?si=EPcg5fAw_18QaKhM Timestamps: 00:00 Quantum Is More Than Codebreakingt 00:51 The Week Q-Day Jumped Years Aheadt 02:38 Why Quantum Felt Useless (Until Now)t 04:42 What Happens If Encryption Fails Quietlyt 05:33 The Tool That Changes Everythingt 07:37 From Beginner to Running Algorithmst 09:26 The Infrastructure Behind the Shiftt 10:58 The Real Bottleneck: Not Physicst 11:59 The Opportunity Everyone’s Missingt ——— 📬 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?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 📚 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: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe #sabinehossenfelder #bobwold #quantumcomputer #quantumcomputing #quantumencryption #quantumsupremacy #quantumsimulation #quantumalgorithms #aiandquantum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    13 mins
  • Neuroscientist: The AI That Refused to Answer. It Beat Every Model

    Neuroscientist: The AI That Refused to Answer. It Beat Every Model
    Apr 16 2026
    A neuroscientist built an AI that refuses to give answers — and it outperformed every model on the market, including the ones trained on billions of users’ data. The implication: every AI that hands you the answer may be quietly making you less capable of thinking without it. Dr. Vivienne Ming is a neuroscientist, AI researcher, and author of Robot Proof, who has spent nearly 30 years building machine learning systems and studying what makes humans irreplaceable alongside them. We cover: -why the 5–10% of people who argue with AI outperform both elite human forecasters and top AI models -what GPS is already doing to your memory and why GPT may be next -the "Sexy Face" game that was secretly training a neural network to reunite orphan refugees -why the information explosion paradox means more free answers lead to less human exploration — even among scientists. Giving you the answer is almost the worst thing these machines can do. Key Takeaways 0:00 – The AI Trained to Never Answer You 0:49 – Why Most People Just Hand Problems to AI 2:18 – How the Cyborgs Beat Everyone 4:55 – What Happens When AI Only Asks Questions 6:10 – The Failure Resume: What It Actually Means 9:14 – What Amazon & Facebook's Data Revealed About Innovation 11:23 – Why Even Scientists Are Exploring Less 15:23 – The Hidden Parenting Book Inside This AI Book 16:14 – If Kids Were Bonds, What Would They Be Worth? 20:17 – The Skills That Predict Everything at Age 65 25:22 – The "Sexy Face" Game That Reunited Refugee Families 31:24 – What Diversity Actually Means on Breakthrough Teams 35:56 – What Einstein's Dad Would Have Gotten Wrong 37:40 – This Is Not the Industrial Revolution 41:17 – GPS Already Shrank Your Brain. GPT Is Next. 51:49 – Why the Book Cover Is Black and Yellow 56:55 – The Benchmark Nobody Is Building 59:46 – Can an AI Ever Have a Happiest Thought? ——— 📬 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?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 📚 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: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating ✍️ 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
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    1 hr and 13 mins
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