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This episode, hosted by Brian Keating—Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego—delves into one of the most fascinating and underappreciated stories at the intersection of beauty, brilliance, and invention. Today, we step away from pure physics and astronomy to explore the remarkable life of Hedy Lamarr, an iconic Hollywood actress whose real genius lay not just on the silver screen, but at the heart of technological innovation.
Listen in as Brian Keating brings to life the legacy of a woman who changed the world—not for fame, but for the sheer joy of invention and enduring curiosity.
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Key Takeaways:
00:00 Hedy Lamarr: Star and Inventor
03:30 Dual Facade: Performance and Analysis
09:04 Espionage and Escape Plan
10:35 Hedy Lamarr's Hollywood Transformation
13:59 Frequency Hopping Communication Technique
16:35 Hedy Lamarr's Overlooked Invention
22:43 Genius: Curiosity Over Credentials
24:01 "Hedy Lamarr: Beyond Hollywood"
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The Scientists is a documentary-style podcast series hosted by astrophysicist Brian Keating. Each episode explores the untold stories behind history’s greatest minds—from Nobel laureates to visionary misfits—revealing the personal struggles, intellectual triumphs, and paradigm-shifting ideas that changed the world. Each week, I dive into the life and legacy of a legendary scientist—experimentalists, theorists, and observers alike—and uncover insights you can apply to your own work and worldview. Science didn’t appear fully formed; it was built by real people solving real problems under pressure. Their ideas still shape our future. We’ll examine not just what they discovered, but who they were—from their obsessions and honors to their most spectacular ideas, brilliant blunders, and beautifully human flaws.
New episodes weekly.
Learn more at BrianKeating.com.
🎙️ Subscribe for compelling science storytelling.
📚 Listen to our companion series Into the Impossible for interviews with living legends.
#science #sciencepodcast #historyofscience #nobelprizewinners #famousscientists #scientificdiscoveries #physics #chemistry #thescientistsbriankeating #intotheimpossible #sciencecommunication
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27:11
First Data from Vera Rubin Observatory Rewrites Astronomy (Starting Now)
In this exclusive interview, Professor Mario Jurić reveals how the Vera Rubin Observatory accidentally discovered 2,000 asteroids in just 10 hours while testing its capabilities on the distant Virgo Cluster—transforming humanity's asteroid discovery rate from 20,000 per year globally to potentially over one million annually with a single telescope. Jurić explains how VRO's revolutionary multi-messenger astronomy capabilities will detect dark matter's effects and light simultaneously, automatically slewing to capture cosmic catastrophes like black hole collisions within 30 seconds of detection. From mapping dark matter in galaxy clusters 54 million light-years away to building Earth's first comprehensive planetary defense system against asteroid impacts, this conversation explores how one observatory is about to fundamentally change both our understanding of the universe and our ability to survive in it.
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Key Takeaways:
00:00 Intro
03:10 Mario’s reaction to the first data
04:13 Democratizing astronomy and citizen science
06:38 Technical details and capabilities
11:28 First look: A fly-through of the Virgo Cluster
21:42 Rubin and the Lambda-CDM model
28:22 How faint a sensitivity can Rubin achieve
33:03 Asteroid discovery revolution
37:52 Challenges of data analysis
41:38 Astronomy and AI
46:34 What kinds of civilization-changing discoveries might be hiding in the data?
50:48 Outro
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Additional resources:
🔹Skyviewer App: https://skyviewer.app/
🔹First Images from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory: https://www.youtube.com/live/dF1g-Ru8mjM?si=Y3-lKTSjZAH_oGHl
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✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/
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Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known.
Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode!
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52:25
NEW Dark Energy Data Surprises Scientists (ft. Kyle Dawson)
Is everything we thought we knew about the universe… wrong? Is the Lambda-CDM model nearing its breaking point? Could dark energy actually be evolving?
In this episode of Into the Impossible, I’m joined by Kyle Dawson and Daniel Green to discuss the latest data from the DESI experiment. These new results are making headlines, and rightfully so, as they hold the potential to transform our understanding of the universe completely.
Kyle Dawson, a key figure in the DESI project and professor at the University of Utah, explains the findings from DESI’s second data release. Together with Daniel Green from the University of California, San Diego, we dig into how fresh observations of dark energy, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), and cosmic expansion are revealing cracks in the standard model. We also break down the implications of these results and talk about the possible existence of negative neutrino masses—a topic that’s been gaining a lot of attention in the cosmology community.
Don’t miss out!
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Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥
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Key Takeaways:
00:00 Intro
01:09 Most surprising results of the DESI experiment
02:38 DESI’s instrumentation and data analysis
05:43 What’s lacking in the CMB?
07:17 The 4.2 sigma tension in cosmological data
10:44 Theoretical models and dark energy evolution
22:16 Neutrino mass, dark energy, and paradigm shifts
28:41 Scepticism about current cosmological models
30:22 Negative neutrino mass
40:35 Technological advancements and the future of DESI
48:15 Outro
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Additional resources:
➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms:
✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list
✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/
🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast
—
Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known.
Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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55:02
The Scientists Ep. 5: Steven Weinberg’s Legacy, Religion, and Cosmology
Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥
Brian Keating reflects on the life and legacy of Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, the legendary physicist and writer whose influence shaped generations of scientists and thinkers. Driven by the regret of never having hosted Weinberg on the show before his passing, Brian takes listeners on a deeply personal journey—from his formative college years, inspired by Weinberg’s groundbreaking book "The First Three Minutes," to his thoughts on the intersection of science, meaning, and religion.
Join Brian Keating as he honors a hero, wrestles with big questions, and invites you to reflect on what truly makes life—and science—impossible to ignore.
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The Scientists is a documentary-style podcast series hosted by astrophysicist Brian Keating. Each episode explores the untold stories behind history’s greatest minds—from Nobel laureates to visionary misfits—revealing the personal struggles, intellectual triumphs, and paradigm-shifting ideas that changed the world. Each week, I dive into the life and legacy of a legendary scientist—experimentalists, theorists, and observers alike—and uncover insights you can apply to your own work and worldview. Science didn’t appear fully formed; it was built by real people solving real problems under pressure. Their ideas still shape our future. We’ll examine not just what they discovered, but who they were—from their obsessions and honors to their most spectacular ideas, brilliant blunders, and beautifully human flaws.
New episodes weekly. Learn more at BrianKeating.com.
🎙️ Subscribe for compelling science storytelling.
📚 Listen to our companion series Into the Impossible for interviews with living legends.
#science #sciencepodcast #historyofscience #nobelprizewinners #famousscientists #scientificdiscoveries #physics #chemistry #thescientistsbriankeating #intotheimpossible #sciencecommunication
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:23:45
Eric Weinstein's Theory of Everything Confirmed?
How are recent DESI experimental results challenging the traditional view of dark energy as a fixed cosmological constant? Are foundational assumptions in Einstein’s general relativity limiting progress in theoretical physics? And how do tensions in cosmological measurements, like the Hubble constant discrepancy, reflect deeper issues in physics?
In this episode, we’ll explore these fundamental questions with none other than Eric Weinstein! Eric is one of the most revered thinkers of our generation. Though not an academic physicist, he proposed a unified theory of physics in 2013, which is supposed to have the potential to explain phenomena that string theory cannot. In a lecture held live at UCSD in April 2025 at the prestigious Astrophysics and Cosmology Seminar, Eric presented an update to his groundbreaking theory. Today, we’ll discuss his fascinating theory, the future of physics and academia, and much more.
Eric is an investor, financial executive, and host of The Portal. He and his brother, Bret Weinstein, coined the term Intellectual Dark Web to refer to an informal group of pundits. Eric is a vocal critic of modern academic hierarchies and advocates for advances in scientific theory over an emphasis on experimental results. He proposed a new unified theory of physics in 2013 and has been an active member of the physics community since then.
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Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥
—
Key Takeaways:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:29 DESI results and the cosmological constant
00:08:33 Why general relativity is fundamentally limited
00:16:11 Elon Musk’s obsession with Mars
00:26:01 Sharing ideas with broader audiences
00:30:56 Dark energy’s evolving nature
00:34:16 Discrepancies in cosmological measurements
00:43:02 Freeing dark energy from constancy
00:50:16 Einstein’s happiest thought, LLMs and physics
00:59:09 Eric’s thoughts on Lenny Susskind, Joe Rogan, and Terrence Howard
01:04:44 Pseudoscience and the debunking community
01:23:55 The future of academia and academic freedom
01:48:45 Political polarization in the United States
01:56:43 October 7th
02:00:50 Remembering Jim Simons and Chern-Simons theory
02:21:10 Outro
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Additional resources:
➡️ Learn more about Eric:
🎙️ Website: https://ericweinstein.org/
➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms:
✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list
✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/
🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast
—
Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known.
Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Think like a physicist. Wonder like a human. Into the Impossible is where Cosmic Conversations happen — uniting Nobel Prize winners, iconoclasts, authors, and technologists to explore reality’s deepest questions. From AI to aliens, from biophysics to the brain, from the cosmos to the multiverse, Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego covers it all.
If you’ve ever asked What’s out there? or What’s next?, this is where curiosity meets clarity.
Learn to think like this. 🎙 Full episodes, notes & more: briankeating.com/podcast