Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

The system that produces the world’s most important discoveries runs on metrics that nobody agrees on, odds that would stop most people, and mentorship that sometimes looks like cruelty in blue ink. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

Lipomi is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Rochester and the author of Science Nonfiction: Behind the Scenes in University Research. His lab works on organic electronics, materials science, recyclable polymers, and the science of human touch. He trained under George Whitesides at Harvard, one of the most cited chemists who has never won the Nobel Prize.

The conversation covers the H-index, what elite mentorship actually looks like when your advisor writes “This is illiterate” in blue ink on your outline, and what the future of academic research versus industry careers looks like in an era of AI, demographic headwinds, and graduate school debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. We also get into homochirality, OLED displays, and why Lipomi thinks the nanotechnology revolution already happened, we just didn’t call it that.

What you’ll hear:

-Whether the academic system is designed to produce scientists or to filter them out

-What is Baumol’s cost disease and why it explains rising tuition costs

-Why the nanotechnology revolution already happened and nobody called it that

-How nanotechnology is used in cancer drug delivery today versus what science fiction promised

-What it actually takes to build a PhD career at the intersection of chemistry, mechanics, and neuroscience

-Whether engineering students should be reading Plato — and what countries that skip it are getting right

“Find a skill at the intersection of three or more interests that no one else is working on.” — Darren Lipomi

CHAPTERS

00:00 He says don't go to college. He runs the department.

01:10 The H-index: imperfect, irreplaceable

02:04 1 in 20 PhDs gets the job

05:42 The meteorite and the origin of life

08:34 Did life's asymmetry come from space?

12:00 Who is an organic materials chemist at 3am?

13:52 The collaboration that started at a coffee shop

15:22 The nanobot revolution already happened

18:24 Nanotechnology inside your body right now

19:08 The $70 billion invention Kodak gave away

22:12 Kodak, Xerox, Bausch + Lomb: what Rochester built

26:06 Working under Whitesides at Harvard

28:54 What he wrote on the outline in blue ink

30:38 Who you work with matters more than what you work on

31:56 Department chair: hostage negotiator, not boss

34:36 Why the department changed its name after 110 years

36:00 The headwinds have never been stronger

38:44 Should engineers read Plato?

39:38 The debt you can't discharge in bankruptcy

40:06 Do you buy Baumol's cost disease?

43:14 Why he had to write the book

48:16 The Fisher-Price camcorder experiment

51:06 Teaching in one sentence. Research in one.

53:42 Losing Darren to Rochester: the Fernando Tatis analogy

Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

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John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving macroscopic quantum tunneling is real. Less than a year later he’s telling why he left Google’s quantum computing team to start over. Subscribe if you want the physics and the politics of building the impossible.

Martinis is the co-founder of Colab and one of the physicists who proved ordinary quantum rules apply to macroscopic systems. He built his career on the same Josephson-junction hardware his Nobel is built on, then led Google’s superconducting-qubit effort, the same team behind Google’s 2019 quantum supremacy claim, before an internal reorg pushed him out.

We go into Anthony Leggett’s challenge to Schrödinger’s cat, what decoherence in quantum mechanics really means, and whether quantum computing is the first technology ever born from pure theory rather than experiment. We also cover the internal Google reorg that pushed Martinis out and what he learned about building something new inside a large institution.

Whether quantum mechanics applies to the macroscopic world and what it took to prove it

Why Martinis thinks quantum computing may be the first technology born from pure theory, not experiment

What negative authority means and why it matters for anyone building something new inside a large institution

Whether the US can win the quantum computing race against China

How Martinis thinks about quantum mechanics interpretations after spending a career inside the math

“Always be on the lookout for the impossible, right?” John Martinis

CHAPTERS

00:00 The Nobel call that almost wasn't

01:01 How his wife found out before he did

03:32 Anthony Leggett's challenge to Schrödinger's cat

05:53 Why a Josephson junction, not a quantum dot or trapped ion

07:45 Quantized oscillations: the “smoking gun” and Balmer's ghost

08:18 Measuring the system: the resonance experiment

11:21 Systematic effects: what separates a good scientist from a lucky one

13:42 The Ed Ohm story: the man who found the CMB and doubted it

15:01 Wigner's “unreasonably effective” math and the weirdest thing about QM

16:54 The transistor myth: chewing gum, coat hangers, and germanium

17:34 Microwave engineering meets quantum mechanics

19:26 Decoherence: the friction you can't live without

24:06 The heretical claim: does theory ever precede technology?

28:22 The “paper qubit” problem

29:34 What quantum computers are actually good for

32:27 Should quantum computing be regulated like AI?

33:35 US vs. China: the quantum computing race

35:44 Collapse, Copenhagen, or many worlds? Martinis's answer

37:43 Leaving Google: “essentially demoted”

40:48 Why Colab exists and what “negative authority” means

42:50 The real bottleneck: funding, not physics

43:31 Final advice: always be on the lookout for the impossible

Qolab: https://qolab.ai/

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

Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

Landing page: https://awake-mill-k25t.here.now

#intotheimpossible #briankeating #JohnMartinis #NobelPrize #quantumcomputing #physics #podcast
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Scott Dodelson spent ten years on the Dark Energy Survey testing the standard model of cosmology. It passed and missed by 2.5 sigma. The Director of Fermilab’s Cosmic Physics Division on why the theory he helped build may be wrong, why nobody can find dark matter, and what it takes to change a scientific consensus. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

Dodelson is Director of the Cosmic Physics Division at Fermilab, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and author of Modern Cosmology, the textbook a generation of cosmologists learned the field from.

Lambda-CDM predicts how the early universe’s tiny fluctuations grew into the structure we see today. The Dark Energy Survey was designed to check that prediction. The answer came back two and a half sigma off. That is both the most precise measurement ever made of how the universe grew, and a crack he cannot stop looking at. His question is not whether the model is close. It is whether close is enough to trust.

We get into the Sigma-8 tension and what it actually takes for a scientific community to change its mind, the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism and his 1994 proposal that sterile neutrinos produced in the early universe could constitute dark matter, and the Neptune vs. Vulcan history of getting dark matter right and wrong. Asked which of those two situations we are in now, Dodelson’s answer is: I have no idea.

What you’ll hear:

Why the April 24, 1992 CMB discovery may have been the only science story ever to lead the New York Times front column

The Dodelson-Widrow mechanism: how ordinary neutrinos in the early universe may have oscillated into the dark matter we see today

Why Brian told Neil deGrasse Tyson to his face that we have already detected dark matter

What it means when a theory can accommodate any result and whether inflation has that problem

Why the particle physics community still does not trust cosmology’s neutrino mass measurements

What cosmology looks like in 2036 if Lambda-CDM breaks

Killing the model is my dream.

0:00 None of it has been found in a lab. How many free passes do we get?

0:44 Dodelson helped build Lambda-CDM. His dream is to kill it.

2:10 10 years. One prediction. Two and a half sigma off.

5:42 "You're in charge" — what mentorship in science actually looks like

6:56 April 24, 1992: cosmology stopped being speculation

9:48 Geoff Burbidge went to his grave a steady-state believer

11:04 What a neutrino is and why it barely interacts with anything

12:36 Brian told Neil deGrasse Tyson we already detected dark matter

18:08 How ordinary neutrinos may have become dark matter

23:24 Lambda-CDM predicts Manhattan's density 13.7 billion years later

26:42 Two and a half sigma: technically a 1% chance the theory is right

28:04 Neptune was dark matter. Vulcan wasn't. Which one are we in now?

31:20 Dark matter, inflation, dark energy: none found in a lab

36:46 If both cracks are the same crack, Lambda-CDM is finished

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

Featured Guest:

Scott Dodelson Substack: https://scottdodelson.substack.com/about

Scott Dodelson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-dodelson-b6ba429/

Scott Dodelson on Twitter/X: https://x.com/ScottDodelson

Modern Cosmology (book): https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/monograph/9780128159484/modern-cosmology

Dark Energy Survey final results: https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/news-and-results/darchives/

Dodelson and Widrow 1994, Sterile neutrinos as dark matter: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9303287

Previous ITI episode with Kyle Dawson on DESI: https://youtu.be/LPx4oiwGp2k?si=u_ZJWfJG5AhvBAEv

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

#intotheimpossible #briankeating #cosmology #darkmatter #darkenergy #physics #LambdaCDM #podcast
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Two theoretical physicists helped design landmark surveys of 1,600+ scientists on the deepest unsolved questions in physics — and found almost no consensus at all.

From string theory's shockingly low support to physicists admitting their models run on "belief," this episode exposes the faith hiding inside science.

Adam Frank (University of Rochester astrophysicist and astrobiologist) and Niayesh Afshordi (Perimeter Institute / University of Waterloo cosmologist, co-author of the APS Physics Magazine "Big Mysteries" survey) join Brian to unpack what physicists actually believe versus what they can prove.

We cover:

- Why string theory pulled a shockingly small share of the vote against loop quantum gravity
- What a Bayesian "prior" reveals about every scientist's hidden beliefs
- Why one branch of physics quietly became unfalsifiable
- How sociology and "tastemakers" can hijack scientific consensus
- Why AI might become the field's unlikely savior.

There is no sane statistical analysis that doesn't have a prior — that's your belief.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Why scientists owe the public real answers
04:00 – Splitting time between research and outreach
07:55 – The survey that "rankled" Brian Keating
09:18 – Are physicists secretly just like Spock?
12:05 – Are we living in an anti-scientific age?
16:56 – Why most scientists refuse to go public
21:36 – Should "belief" ever appear in a survey?
23:12 – Is string theory really 21st-century physics?
26:20 – When sociology hijacks scientific consensus
28:39 – The hidden "prior" behind every experiment
33:01 – String theory's shockingly low vote count
39:03 – Four levels of belief, from data to faith
41:39 – Inside the 1,675-physicist mystery survey
46:12 – Kingmakers, tastemakers, and physics cliques
54:12 – Is advanced tech indistinguishable from magic?
59:23 – Could AI become physics' long-awaited savior?
1:01:47 – What's next for Adam and Niayesh

———

📬 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/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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Annie Jacobsen on BIOLOGICAL WAR: how a single lab leak could take us from outbreak to anarchy in six days — and why bio may be scarier than nuclear.

WIN a signed copy of BIOLOGICAL WAR or NUCLEAR WAR, a meteorite & more — enter free: https://briankeating.com/annie

(Join there for the free Biological War Scenario Simulation and Source Dossier + early access to my next Nobel-laureate interview.)

Covid killed ~1% of the people it infected. Pneumonic plague, untreated, kills nearly 100% within 24 hours. In her new book Biological War: A Scenario, bestselling journalist Annie Jacobsen war-games what happens when an engineered pathogen escapes — drawing on interviews with presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, STRATCOM commanders, epidemiologists, and directors of Operation Warp Speed.

We get into gain-of-function, the Soviet bioweapons program, mirror life, AI and bioweapons (including her conversation with Sam Altman), the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter — and why the first 24 hours decide everything.

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY + GET THE FREE SOURCE DOSSIER: https://briankeating.com/annie

GET THE BOOK (Annie narrates the audiobook): https://www.amazon.es/Biological-War-non-fiction-thriller-bestselling/dp/1911742035

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAEBqvjj-QM

0:00 Covid was 1%. Pneumonic plague is 100%.
1:31 Why this conversation matters (please subscribe)
2:05 Don't judge a book by its cover — Biological War
4:54 "You can only mitigate extermination"
5:50 Reporting a classified world without a clearance
9:00 Gain-of-function: cure or weapon?
11:22 BSL-4, Vektor & the Siberia lab leak
15:28 Katalin Karikó & the two sides of the lab bench
18:06 Paul Berg & when biology turned dangerous
20:42 Paranoia as doctrine: why the Soviets cheated
23:13 Tailored bioweapons & genetic privacy
27:16 Could it happen again? What Covid taught us
33:40 The WHO "not airborne" mistake & the collapse of trust
36:52 Both sides failed: the vaccine politics
39:48 The "euphoria" enhancement — dark-hearted evil
44:02 Why "airborne" changes everything
45:50 Climate vs. AI: the next scenario?
48:12 Biological twilight & "devolution"
52:52 Fritz Haber and the hubris of genius
54:36 AI + bio: the real threat
1:00:34 Mirror life: the extinction-level horror
1:04:44 Trinity Day, Iran & "the atomic weapon"
1:08:26 The Fermi Paradox & the Great Filter
1:09:34 A gift for Annie (a meteorite + a piece of the Moon)
1:16:36 Igor Domaradsky's secret notes
1:21:12 Daschle, anthrax & "inhuman things just to survive"
1:21:56 If you were President: shutting down the internet
1:27:18 Who dies first — first responders and mothers
1:33:02 Sam Altman, ChatGPT & the change OpenAI made
1:37:26 "You want me on that wall"
1:40:00 A hopeful ending

ABOUT ANNIE JACOBSEN
Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Operation Paperclip, Area 51, and Surprise, Kill, Vanish.

GO DEEPER
• Katalin Karikó — the mRNA breakthrough: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oPZMPMlzsEFEyvVHA5dAE
• Jay Bhattacharya — Follow Science, Not Scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTnJNXYFg9M
• Freeman Dyson — Into the Impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egpsFbbpkHQ

A FEW SOURCES FROM THE BOOK (full dossier at https://briankeating.com/annie)
• "Confronting risks of mirror life," Science (2024): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads9158
• Ken Alibek, Biohazard (the Soviet program from the man who ran it)
• Biological Weapons Convention (1972): https://disarmament.unoda.org/en/our-work/weapons-mass-destruction/biological-weapons/biological-weapons-convention

SUBSCRIBE so guests like Annie keep saying yes: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

Newsletter + meteorite offer: https://BrianKeating.com/edu: https://briankeating.com/annie

Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

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

What scares you more — nuclear war or biological war? Tell me in the comments.

#AnnieJacobsen #BiologicalWar #Bioweapons #Pandemic #BrianKeating #IntoTheImpossible #NuclearWar #MirrorLife #AI #Biosecurity
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