Into The Impossible

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. He has published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals. He holds an MD and PhD in economics, both earned at Stanford University. He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal arguing for an alternative public health approach to dealing with COVID-19, through "focused protection" of the people most at risk. In it, Bhattacharya and the two other researchers called on governments to overturn their coronavirus strategies and to allow young and healthy people to return to normal life while protecting the most vulnerable. twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya https://gbdeclar

James (Jim) Tour is a renowned chemist and nanotechnologist and is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Comp. Sci., Materials Science & NanoEngineering, at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He conducts research at the Smalley-Curl Institute & NanoCarbon Center. Dr. Tour has been the source of many well-publicized debates on and offline, including with Prof. Lee Cronin: Are we close to discovering the Origin Of Life? James Tour vs Lee Cronin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DHvN... Tour's research has been the subject of a video by Dave Farina, a YouTuber, arguing that Tour is wrong and that origin-of-life researchers are well on their way to solving the mystery of life’s origin: Elucidating the Agenda of James Tour: A Defense of Abiogenesis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SixyZ... Tour responded to @professordaveexplains) in his own 13 episode YouTube video series: A Course on Abiogenesis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71dqA... www.jmtour.com http://www.drjamestour.com/ www.youtube.com/drjamest

Balaji S. Srinivasan is an American entrepreneur and investor. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford university and sports several high scale financial successes; he was the co-founder of Counsyl, the former Chief Technology Officer of Coinbase, and former general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. twitter.com/balajis www.amazon.com/Network-State-How-Start-Country-ebook/dp/B09VPKZR3G Connect with me:

Francis Halzen is the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University Wisconsin-Madison and principal investigator for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world's largest neutrino detector, he is the Director of the Institute for Elementary Particle Physics, and the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A theoretician studying problems at the interface of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, Halzen has been working since 1987 on the AMANDA experiment, a first-generation neutrino telescope at the South Pole. AMANDA observations represent a proof of concept for IceCube. After six years of construction, IceCube became operational in 2010. IceCube searches for neutrinos from the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars. The IceCube telescope is a powerful tool to search for dark matter, and could reveal the new

Garry Nolan is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. His research is in microbiology, immunology, bio-computation, and analysis of UFO artifacts, materials, and he is actively investigating reports of UFO encounters. Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist at Harvard, the director of the Galileo Project, and the author of Extraterrestrial. In 1993 he moved to Harvard University where he was tenured three years later. He is now the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science and former chair of the department. EPISODE LINKS: WOW DNA SIGNAL http://bit.ly/3EBASJr Avi's Website: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/ Latest essays: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Opinion.html Garry's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GarryPNolan Nolan Lab's Website: https://web.stanford.edu/group/nolan/ Connect with me:

Just a few thoughts on 'cosmic insignificance therapy', popularized in the book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" Oliver Burkeman, brought to my attention in this blog post by Tim Ferriss https://tim.blog/2021/12/15/the-liberation-of-cosmic-insignificance-therapy/, with some additional thoughts on the philosophy of Sam Harris and Scott Galloway as well. I hope you enjoy and I thank you for being along on this cosmic adventure with me! Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel, just click here

Niall Ferguson’s most recent book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. In this book he posits that disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, and financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck.   Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Niall F

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. Bernardo’s most recent book is The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com. Connect with me:

In his most recent book If Science is to Save Us, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees argues that, in his expert and personal analysis of the scientific endeavor on which we all depend, that we need to think globally, we need to think rationally and we need to think long-term, empowered by twenty-first-century technology but guided by values that science alone cannot provide. In this timely work, Lord Rees details how there has never been a time when ‘following the science’ has been more important for humanity. He warns that our world is so interconnected that a collapse - societal or ecological - would be a truly global catastrophe. So it’s ever more crucial to ensure that science is deployed optimally, and that brakes are applied to applications that are dangerous or unethical. At no other point in history have we had such advanced knowledge and technology at our fingertips, nor had such astonishing capacity to determine the future of our planet. Therefore, decisions we must make on how science is applied belong o

Join host Mat Kaplan as he proudly introduces the person who will take on the show he created 20 years ago. Then we’ll join astrophysicist Brian Keating at a joyful gathering of cosmologists who hope to reveal secrets of the Universe through the new Simons Observatory. You might win Brian’s new book about thinking like a Nobel Prize winner in the What’s Up space trivia contest. There’s more to discover at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-introducing-new-host Youtube video of the Simons Observatory event panel: We Are Cosmologists, Ask Me Anything: https://youtu.be/c4L782wUStw Watch the video with slides here: https://youtu.be/q1cPyE9rAD4 Connect with me:

Guido W. Imbens, along with David Card and Joshua Angrist, shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics for “methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships”. In 2017 he received the Horace Mann medal at Brown University. An honor shared by your host Professor Brian Keating. He is The Applied Econometrics Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2012, and has also taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. He holds an honorary degree from the University of St Gallen. He is also the Amman Mineral Faculty Fellow at the Stanford GSB.  Imbens specializes in econometrics, and in particular methods for drawing causal inferences from experimental and observational data. He has published extensively in the leading economics and statistics journals. Together with Donald Rubin he has published a book, "Causal Inference in Statistics, Social and Biomedical Sciences”. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities,

Join me and Fraser Cain (https://www.youtube.com/c/universetodayvids) for a wide-ranging romp through the Universe of ideas! We'll take questions and hopefully answer a few. Don't miss this chance to chat with a legend! @FraserCain  Space and astronomy news comes fresh three times weekly from Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today and co-host of Astronomy Cast. If you're a fan of space, sci-fi, and pop culture, you'll love his Guide to Space. These short videos come out every Monday and Thursday and answer a burning question that astronomy fans want to know. We talk about black holes, galaxies, the Universe, and the search for aliens. If you want the latest news in space and astronomy, Fraser records the Weekly Space Hangout live every Friday afternoon at 12:00pm. Join the live broadcast and ask your questions to his team of space journalists and special guests.He's had astronauts, science fiction authors, and space scientists on the show. Watch the video with slides here: https://youtu.be/q1cPyE9rAD4 Conn

In his acclaimed latest book, The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World, Professor Timothy Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution—one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don’t know. The Primacy of Doubt on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Primacy-Doubt-Quantum-Uncertainty-Understand/dp/1541619714 Timothy Palmer is the Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin Institute at the University of Oxford. He is a mathematical physicist who has spent most

Welcome to my first AMA! Let me know If I should do a part 2! Jay Yow asks Will

NIST Fellow William D. Phillips received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.” He shared the honor with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. Their work combined to create some of the most important technologies of modern atomic physics, which thousands of researchers worldwide employ today for a wide variety of applications. Today, he joins us to discuss time keeping throughout history and breakthroughs on the way to the best clocks ever made! Phillips began his experiments with laser trapping and cooling shortly after he arrived in 1978 at the National Bureau of Standards (the agency that became NIST), with the intent of creating a more accurate atomic clock. Several of his innovations in the following years became landmarks in the field. These included a device using a laser along with a magnetic field to decelerate and cool an atomic beam (the “Zeeman slower”); demonstrating the first device that trapped electrically neutral atoms (a magneti

Be sure to watch the video version of this episode with slides here: https://youtu.be/F3P1ZtLZd9s Genesis & The Big Bang “If You Can Count the Stars, A Jewish Astronomer’s Journey! Think back to the late-night dorm room discussions from your college days. We are going to talk about cosmology, the Big Bang, and more from two perspectives, from the perspective of an astrophysicist and the perspective of a Torah observant Jew and ask what they may have in common, and how they differ. How can you reconcile when one seems to be in conflict with the other? I think it's very, very crucial for modern people, secular or religious, to confront. It is said the signature of God is truth. So if something isn't true, then it can't be found to be resonant with notions of eternal truth and perhaps ultimate truth. I'll take you on my Jewish journey which will take us around the planet, and, and maybe beyond. And then I'm going to have some interesting confluences between the study of what we do in cosmology and also somethin

How many Multiverses are there? Featuring @davidBrin & the late, great Andy Friedman, colleague of the 2022 co-recipient of the @NobelPrize, Anton Zeilinger. Let me know your favorite takeaway from this chat about the profligate nature of the Multiverse. Find Andy's website here https://asfriedman.physics.ucsd.edu Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/9oahwWBcg1A Connect with me:

Renowned physicist Neil Turok, Holder of the Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, joins me to discuss the state of science and the universe. Neil Turok has been director emeritus of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics since 2019. He specializes in mathematical physics and early-universe physics, including the cosmological constant and a cyclic model for the universe. He has written several books including Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang and The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos. Topics Include: Discussion of Niels Books The life and discoveries of James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday What's wrong with physics today? Fundamental laws of the Universe in equations. Existential Questions on the meaning of life, advice to his former self, and things he's changed his mind on.  Make sure to watch the video for Neil’s PowerPoint slides here:  Connect with Brian Keating:

A conversation from the vault, back in Spring 2022. As relevant as ever, hear Eric's thoughts on sundry topics such as: The twin nuclei and the unleashing of great power Harry Truman vs Kamala Harris. The problems with our leadership. Distinguishing between "complicated" and "complex". Keating's pedagogy. What happened on September 12th, 2001? Are we in a death spiral? The acceleration of science and the role of engineering. What new fundamental theories should we focus on? Do a few people wield too much power? Games countries and the ultrawealthy play, and how to prevent the collapse of civilization. The argument for academic freedom. Questions from The Metaphoric Mind: Can the sacred, intuitive, and rationale co-exist? How can a new scientific paradigm be encouraged to emerge? What is the key datum you would need to pick the best-unified theory? Eric's current views on bitcoin and crypto. Connect with me:

Newly released photos from the James Webb Space Telescope have allowed scientists to view farther into space, and farther into the past, than ever before. The images emerging are raising questions about the origins of our universe. One viral article from independent scientist Eric Lerner made the rounds on social media in recent weeks with its provocative claim that the Big Bang never happened. We speak to UC San Diego Professor of Cosmology Brian Keating about what the images show, and what we can and can’t conclude from them. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Connect with Brian Keating: