Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

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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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
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A physics professor ran the energy budget on the Nimitz tic-tac. The maneuver needs about a thousand gigawatts, more than ten times every nuclear plant in the United States combined.

Nothing we build survives its own waste heat at that scale. So what was flying?

Kevin Knuth is a professor of physics at the University at Albany and a former NASA scientist who now applies Bayesian statistics to UAP sensor data.

We cover: why a 5,400 g maneuver would turn a pilot into soup, where the energy went when the object stopped and no explosion followed, the 1954 radar measurements nobody wants to talk about, the New Zealand frigate that went dark and adrift in three seconds, and why the records from that deployment stay classified until 2062.

Knuth says the power numbers alone rule out human technology. I push back on whether the sensors agree.

Newsletter, full transcript, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: briankeating.com/aliens

CHAPTERS

00:00 Why this field needs gatekeepers
03:50 How anomalous is anomalous?
06:40 The UFO photo that was a seagull
10:40 Radar clocked them at 19 km/s in 1954
15:00 5,400 g and a body weighing 227 tonnes
19:00 The radar return problem he had not considered
21:45 A gigawatt of waste heat and nowhere to put it
24:30 The 747 chased by something carrier sized
29:00 Why a number without an error bar is worthless
34:30 The NASA job he was not qualified for
37:00 Proxima Centauri in a day and a half
41:00 The warship that lost all power in 3 seconds
46:30 Pushing a column of water that cannot compress
48:45 The light that burned bark off the trees
53:00 What the power numbers rule out
56:00 The 95 percent problem
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