Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

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

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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

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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