Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

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Michael Wong recently discussed theory of evolution on TED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSrf7ErdHWA  — in this conversation, we go deeper on the law of increasing functional information and what it means for life, complexity, and the future of science.

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INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE — where Nobel Prize winners, physicists, and bold thinkers explore the biggest questions in science.

Is there a second arrow of time? Astrobiologist and planetary scientist Dr. Michael Wong joins Brian Keating to explore the law of increasing functional information — a proposed new law of nature that may explain how complexity evolves across minerals, biology, AI, and the cosmos.

Dr. Michael Wong of the Carnegie Institution for Science has been working with a cross-disciplinary group of scientists — the "Missing Law Group" — to propose something bold: a new law of nature. Their law of increasing functional information argues that evolving systems, whether biological or not, tend toward greater complexity and function over time. In this conversation, Brian and Michael unpack what functional information actually means, how it differs from Shannon entropy, and why it may describe something fundamental about the universe we live in.

From the formation of minerals in stellar atmospheres to the evolution of life on Earth, Michael walks through how this framework applies across planetary science, astrobiology, and even cancer research. Brian pushes on the hard questions — the Fermi paradox, the boundary conditions of the law, its relationship to the second law of thermodynamics, and whether it truly qualifies as a "law" at all. Sean Carroll blurbed the book and later called it out on his podcast — Brian asks Michael about that tension directly.

They also get into panspermia, the contingent role of cosmic collisions in shaping Earth's evolutionary history, the search for biosignatures on Mars and beyond, and what the rise of generative AI looks like through the lens of selection for function. This is a wide-ranging, technically honest conversation about one of the most ambitious proposals in contemporary science.

Key Takeaways:
00:00:35 There May Be a Second Arrow of Time — and It Points Toward Complexity

00:01:35 The Law of Increasing Functional Information Explains How the Universe Evolves

00:07:15 Functional Information Measures How Well a System Performs a Specific Function

00:11:30 Three Universal Selection Pressures Drive All Evolving Systems 00:18:00 Mineral Evolution on Earth Is a Measurable Proof of the Law in Action

00:22:00 The Law Is a Tendency, Not a Guarantee — It Doesn't Resolve the Fermi Paradox

00:27:00 Life and Non-Life Contain the Same Building Blocks — the Difference Is in the Distributions

00:32:15 Cosmic Collisions Didn't Derail Evolution — They Opened New Possibility Spaces

00:50:00 Cancer Behaves Like an Evolving System — and That Could Change How We Treat It

01:05:15 AI Is a New Form of Evolving Life — and Without Stronger Selection Pressure, It's DangerousFeatured Guest ➡️ 

Follow Michael Wong 

🌐 Website: https://miquai.myportfolio.com/ 

📚 The book: Time’s Second Arrow (co-authored with Robert Hazen) : https://www.amazon.com/Times-Second-Arrow-Evolution-Nature-ebook/dp/B0FJ2ZJL53

🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://x.com/miquai

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#physics #astrobiology #complexity #evolutionoflife #briankeating #intotheimpossible

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Brian Keating sits down with the ever-curious Avi Loeb for a mind-bending exploration into some of science's greatest mysteries and controversies. The conversation spans everything from the evolving understanding of comets and meteors—highlighting the false starts and surprising twists in scientific history—to the tantalizing possibilities of extraterrestrial life and the intrigue surrounding potential government disclosure.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Aliens.gov: Speculation and Mystery

06:02 Satellite Imaging Unveils Unusual Objects

15:37 Alien Claims or Smokescreen?

26:16 Interstellar Object Anomalies Explained

31:46 Life Clues on Icy Object?

39:08 Academic Harassment by Editors

47:05 Finding More Interstellar Objects

54:05 Life on Mars: Earth Origin?

59:15 Life Transfer: Natural or Directed?

01:08:32 Dwarf Stars and Habitability

01:16:06 AI: Alien Intelligence's Impact

01:23:37 Technosignatures and Extraterrestrial Communication

01:29:22 Are We Ready for Answers?

01:41:38 CMB Analysis: No AI Allowed

01:44:46 Open Science via Simons Observatory
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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

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#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #AviLoeb #AlienTechnology #UFO #ExtraterrestrialLife #SETI #Astrophysics #SpaceDiscovery #UAP #Interstellar #ScienceExplained
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In this episode of The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast, Brian Keating sits down with Andy Weir, the bestselling author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, to explore the real science behind one of the most ambitious science fiction stories ever written. With the upcoming film adaptation of Project Hail Mary generating excitement among fans, we dig into the physics, astrophysics, and speculative biology that make the story so compelling.

Could the mysterious energy source known as astrophage actually exist? What does real astrophysics say about interstellar travel, relativistic journeys, and humanity’s chances of reaching nearby star systems? Andy Weir explains how he builds scientifically grounded worlds while still telling gripping stories, and Brian breaks down which elements of the novel are plausible according to modern physics.

The conversation also explores the process of writing hard science fiction, how scientific accuracy shapes storytelling, and why readers and scientists alike have embraced Project Hail Mary as one of the most scientifically informed sci-fi novels of the last decade. Along the way, Brian and Andy discuss the challenges of adapting such a technically rich story into a major Hollywood film and what audiences might expect when the movie arrives.

If you enjoy deep conversations about physics, astronomy, science fiction, and the boundary between imagination and reality, this episode will give you a fascinating look at how real science inspires great storytelling.

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Key Takeaways:

00:00 Andy Weir Discusses 'Project Hail Mary'
10:44 "Balancing Science and Creativity"
16:03 "Global Unity Against Common Threats"
18:56 Amateurs Driving Innovation
25:35 Fermi Paradox: Light Speed Limit
29:30 "Building a Shared Language"
35:32 "5,000 Words Weekly Writing System"
46:58 UCSD Physics Experience Reflection
51:23 "Colleges Should Be Trade Schools"
57:08 Billion-Year Human Legacy Capsule

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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

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#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #andyweir #projecthailmary #themartian #sciencefiction #hardsciencefiction #scifibooks #spacescience
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David Sussillo spent years training neural networks at Google Brain

and now leads research at Meta Reality Labs. His verdict on the

path to artificial consciousness might surprise you.

In this conversation, we discuss why scaling transformers alone

won't produce conscious AI, how recurrent neural networks differ

from the transformer architectures powering today's LLMs, the

FORCE algorithm he developed to train RNNs, what his work on

Meta's EMG wristband reveals about AI and biological signals,

Rich Sutton's Bitter Lesson and whether we're locked into a

GPU-transformer paradigm, and why studying the brain may be

the only way out of AI's current limitations.

David is also the author of Emergence, a braided memoir that

tells the story of his path from foster care to the frontier

of neuroscience and AI research.

David Sussillo is a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs

and an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He completed

his PhD at Columbia University under Larry Abbott and previously

worked at Google Brain.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Scale alone won't produce consciousness — here's why 

00:25 The "bitter lesson": big data crushes every algorithmic invention 

01:15 How hallucinations were discovered early at Google 

05:00 The lock-in problem: why LLM + GPU may cap AI's ceiling 

08:25 What Meta's neural wristband is actually trying to solve 

11:20 Rich Sutton's bitter lesson explained 

14:15 "More is Different" — why you can't reduce complexity upward 

28:30 The book Emergence — two stories braided into one 

36:00 Why mentorship matters more than intelligence for at-risk kids 

47:00 Stability over intensity: what kids in foster care actually need

 ➡️ Follow David Sussillo 

🌐 Website / Research: Meta Reality Labs 

📚 Emergence (memoir): https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Memoir-Boyhood-Computation-Mysteries/dp/1538768577 

🎓 Stanford / Columbia / Carnegie Mellon Alumni

✍️ Email: [email protected] 

🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://x.com/SussilloDavid

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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

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#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating
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Aswath Damodaran joins Brian Keating to argue that markets, universities, and financial models are all suffering the same disease — mistaking mechanical processes for genuine thinking — and explains why Nobel economists aren't billionaires, why academia is the most deserving target for disruption, and why every major asset class is now overpriced with nowhere left to hide.

00:00 Intro

00:01:37 Why Nobel Economists Aren't Billionaires

00:06:08 Universities Have Completely Lost the Plot

00:07:43 95% of Academic Research Is Worthless

00:13:05 The University Is a Sticky Business — But Cracks Are Forming

00:40:00 ChatGPT Already Does What Bankers Charge Millions For

00:46:43 The Most Dangerous Number in Finance

00:52:35 There Is No Safe Place Left to Put Your Money

00:55:48 When Every Asset Is Overpriced, Buy What You Love

01:00:22 We Are Losing Our Ability to Think

01:01:30 Markets Are Smarter Than Experts — Every Single Time

 ➡️ Follow Aswath Damodaran 

🌐 Website: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ 

📚 The Little Book of Valuation: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/

 📝 Musings on Markets (Substack): https://aswathdamodaran.substack.com

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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

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#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating
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