PodcastsScienceInto the Impossible With Brian Keating

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Big Bang Productions Inc.
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
Latest episode

591 episodes

  • Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

    Will AI Replace Scientists?

    2026/03/06 | 41 mins.
    Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥

    In this video, we discuss the rapidly evolving intersection of artificial intelligence and fundamental science and how AI is transforming the way physicists handle massive streams of data from modern observatories—while also explaining where its power ends and human creativity begins.

    Tune in for insights, surprising stories, and a behind-the-scenes look at how scientists are navigating the AI revolution. 🚀

    -

    Key Takeaways:

    00:00 - Cosmologist Exploring Universe and AI
    05:30 - AI Success and Physics Limits
    09:48 - How Did the Universe Begin?
    14:00 - Limits of AI in Scientific Insight
    16:04 - Cosmology's Data Revolution
    19:29 - AI Insights: Science and Writing
    23:04 - Limits of Predictive Models
    25:32 - AI's Academic Impact: Pros & Cons
    33:24 - LLM Chips and AI Accuracy
    34:41 - Accountability, Writing, and Discovery
    -

    Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 Get my books:

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
    🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
    📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list
    ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #artificialintelligence #aiinscience #physics #machinelearning #futureofscience #aiandscience #scienceexplained #aiuniverse
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  • Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

    Nick Lane: The Engine That Built Life

    2026/03/03 | 1h 14 mins.
    Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥

    Nick Lane joins Brian Keating to argue that life is not information running on chemistry but energy in motion—showing how a single ancient metabolic “transformer” predates genes, powers mitochondria, shapes aging and cancer, constrains alien life, and reveals why today’s AI excitement echoes a solution biology discovered billions of years ago.

    00:00 — Defining life vs. death; membrane potential as the boundary between living and dead
    00:50 — The title “Transformer” and parallels between AI transformers and biochemical transformation
    03:22 — Schrödinger’s What Is Life? and why defining life is intrinsically slippery
    06:25 — Why the Krebs cycle sits at the center of metabolism
    08:45 — The reverse Krebs cycle, CO₂ fixation, and links to cancer metabolism
    11:35 — Mitochondrial membrane potential and the electrical field that powers life
    15:00 — Reverse Krebs cycle vs. Calvin cycle and the evolution of carbon fixation
    18:00 — Endosymbiosis: origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts
    30:02 — Metabolism before genes; CO₂ + hydrogen and prebiotic chemistry
    59:49 — Rapid-fire Q&A: RNA world critique and big open questions in origin-of-life research

    ------------------------------------------------------

    ➡️ Follow Nick Lane

    🌐 Website: https://www.nick-lane.net  

    📚 Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death: https://nick-lane.net/books/transformer-the-deep-chemistry-of-life-and-death/ 

    Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 Get my books:

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating

    🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list

    ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog

    🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast
    #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  • Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

    John C. Lennox: Has AI Become God? The Ultimate THREAT of Artificial Intelligence

    2026/02/24 | 1h 27 mins.
    Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥

    In this episode, I sit down with renowned Oxford mathematician, philosopher of science, and public intellectual John C. Lennox to explore the urgent questions surrounding artificial intelligence and humanity’s future.

    We dive into the biggest questions about AI, consciousness, truth, faith, and what it means to be human in an age of accelerating technology. If you’re curious about whether AI is humanity’s greatest achievement, its greatest temptation, or something even more profound, watch the full conversation and join us as we explore the future of intelligence—and our place within it.

    Key Takeaways:

    01:05 - Who Decides What’s True in the Age of AI?
    03:14 - Can AI Ever Be Truly Creative? The ‘Einstein Test’
    04:10 - Consciousness: The Uncrossable Barrier
    07:20 - The QWERTY Keyboard Problem: Are We Stuck with LLMs?
    19:10 - The AI Hall of Mirrors: Training on Itself
    27:02 - Information Isn’t Just Bits and Atoms
    32:05 - Are We Trying to Build God?
    36:48 - The Deepest Question—What Does It Mean to Be Human?
    47:50 - The Temptation to Play God: From Babel to the Singularity
    50:14 - AI’s Relationship to Power and Surveillance

    -

    Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 Get my books:

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
    🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
    📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list
    ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #artificialintelligence #aiandethics #2084 #religionandscience #surveillancesociety #superintelligence #philosophyofscience #humanconsciousness

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  • Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

    Can You Find God in the Laws of Physics? This is World!

    2026/02/23 | 40 mins.
    Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥

    In this conversation, I break down a provocative idea: science doesn’t “prove” ultimate truths — it eliminates what’s false. And if that’s how physics works, then the search for God (or the disproof of God) has to play by the same rules: hypotheses, predictions, and falsifiability.

    ------------------------------------------------------

    Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 Get my books:

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
    🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
    📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list
    ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  • Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

    The Taboo Topic Sam Harris Won't Touch

    2026/02/17 | 33 mins.
    Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥

    In this episode, I revisit my podcast with Sam Harris. At the end of our discussion, Harris abruptly cut things short after we debated the meaning of slavery in the Bible and Talmud. Was this an honest philosophical disagreement, or an example of intellectual overstatement and rhetorical sleight-of-hand?

    Sam Harris is widely regarded as a leading public intellectual, yet during our 3.5-hour dialogue, I encountered a curious blind spot he consistently sidesteps.

    We cover:

    Sam Harris fleeing the 2025 LA Fires with a 'jar of MDMA and a gun" (02:00)
    Harris’s controversial claim that slavery disproves a benevolent God (09:12)
    The Hebrew word *“eved”* and its deeper meaning (09:30–11:51)
    Why Biblical servitude is not the same as American chattel slavery
    Sam’s dismissal of centuries of rabbinic scholarship (15:39–16:17)
    His argument about the optic blind spot as a “design flaw” (12:59–14:36)
    The role of psychedelics in Harris’s worldview (18:45–20:43)
    How confidence without expertise can turn into intellectual bad faith

    This isn’t about attacking Sam Harris — it’s about testing the limits of rationalism, confronting blind spots, and asking whether even the most brilliant thinkers can fall into ideological echo chambers.

    Watch the full original conversation here: • Sam Harris: The TRUTH About Consciousness ...

    👉 Subscribe for more debates with leading scientists, philosophers, and iconoclasts.

    -

    Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours: / @drbriankeating

    📚 Get a copy of my books:

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    📺 Watch my most popular videos:📺

    Neil Turok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt5cFLN65fI
    Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1
    Eric Weinstein vs. Stephen Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1
    Sir Roger Penrose: https://youtu.be/AMuqyAvX7Wo
    Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/g00ilS6tBvs
    Avi Loeb: https://youtu.be/N9lUceHsLRw

    Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
    🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
    📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list
    ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating #NikolayKukushkin
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More Science podcasts

About Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

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
Podcast website

Listen to Into the Impossible With Brian Keating, Science Weekly and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app

Get the free radio.net app

  • Stations and podcasts to bookmark
  • Stream via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
  • Supports Carplay & Android Auto
  • Many other app features
Social
v8.7.2 | © 2007-2026 radio.de GmbH
Generated: 3/7/2026 - 2:00:45 AM