Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Part Two: Before the Big Bang: God, Alien Life & The Operating System of Reality | Dr. Brian Keating

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

What if EVERYTHING we know about reality is missing a deeper operating system?In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Dr. Brian Keating (professor of physics, experimental cosmologist, and host of the Into the Impossible podcast) dives into the biggest unanswered questions in science, consciousness, God, the Big Bang, extraterrestrial life, simulation theory, and the hidden limits of human knowledge.Dr. Keating breaks down:- Why humanity NEEDS a Grand Unified Theory before we can ever reach a true “Theory of Everything”, and how scientists are trying to uncover the operating system of reality itself- “A telescope is a time machine”: How looking into deep space is literally looking backward through time toward the origins of existence- Shocking scientific and philosophical implications of the Big Bang, and the terrifying question: What was BEFORE time?- Could another universe have collapsed to create ours?- Why studying space-time itself may unlock secrets hidden before the beginning of the universe- Why the Big Bang explains the expanding universe, and where modern cosmology still breaks down- How Dr. Keating reconciles being both a scientist & a person of faith- Can God & science coexist? How God may tie into the creation of the universe through a scientific lens- Why God’s existence should not be subjected to scientific testing- Hidden limits of both religion AND scientific data- Where consciousness may actually come from according to modern physics- Why the role of scientists is not to “prove” things- Why even world-famous scientists secretly struggle with imposter syndrome- Deistic implications of the Simulation Hypothesis, and whether reality itself could be engineered- Search for extraterrestrial life: why we still have ZERO confirmed evidence despite viral claims- Debunking alleged “signs of life” on Mars and separating science from speculation- His take on the mysterious deaths and disappearances of U.S. scientists connected to nuclear & aerospace research- Could unexplained events be connected to UAPs, nonhuman intelligence, or classified technology?- Cattle mutilations, alleged energy weapons, and why unexplained phenomena always breed suspicion- Why uncertainty is one of the most dangerous (and fascinating) forces in human civilizationThis episode explores the edge where cosmology, philosophy, consciousness, religion, and the unknown collide.If you’re fascinated by the Big Bang, aliens, simulation theory, UAPs, consciousness, physics, God, or the future of humanity, this conversation will completely change how you think about reality itself!Substack newsletter & transcript: https://briankeating.substack.com//mbbMayim's viewers only — win a real 4.3-billion-year-old meteorite: https://briankeating.com/mbbDr. Brian Keating’s podcast, Into the Impossible: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJGKdZD30K_9rVCDAdRSwoJLi5ls6JN-qDr. Brian Keating’s books: https://briankeating.com/books/Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm I am Bialik. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with physicist Dr. Brian Keating. Part one of our conversation should not be missed. And in part two, we're going to talk about God's existence. Can we subject it to scientific tests? Imposter syndrome that every famous scientist in history has experienced. The search for extraterrestrial life.

And I cannot help but ask about cattle mutilations. And could they be connected to aliens? Here is part two of our conversation with Dr. Brian Keating. Brake. Mine Bealex Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep. Summer's in the air, and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Summer allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest.

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So, first of all, I think that God's existence should be subjected to scientific tests. Now, this, I get into trouble. You know, I'm wearing this funny hat, right? So, like, people say, like, no, you should have perfect faith. I believe in, you know, Animami, I believe in perfect faith that God has gone. And all these things are going to happen. And no, I'm sorry. I can't do that.

You might be able to believe that. You might be able to believe, you know, certain things. but, you know, my sense, I don't like to have belief, but I don't think we should limit God by saying what he, what evidence he should be subjected to. So if you do, you know, kind of assert that, you're basically saying you can't question God. And there are a lot of bad things said, you know, by, you know, religious, by atheists that are almost religious in nature. Like some of those dogmatic people, Sam Harris, so I know you've had on, I've had him on my show. Richard Dawkins, I hosted him in person in your home nation last year. And none of them, without exception.

have a familiarity beyond like the basics that you might get in a yeshiva or in a sunday school because what do they do most people like laurence kraus most famous you know kind of the militant new atheist who wrote a book called a universe from nothing which we later come to find nothing it ain't nothing but but we can discuss that some other time right his his main notion is that this is the religion is damaging and so he's jewish he had a bar mitzvah and then for most jewish boys Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Sam Harris. The bar mitzvah that they had, that I never had, that they had is the graduation. It's the getting out of prison.

It signifies, I'm never setting foot in that temple. All the boys left synagogue when we were 13. They all leave it, right? Yeah. But, you know, for me, I came back to it very late in life. And so I think I have a deeper, more adult perspective on it. But they're left with this frozen, calcified, sclerotic view. But I always say to them, I said, Lawrence, would you?

because I've interviewed many times. And I love these people, but I have to be honest with them. I'm not going to pull punches because I want to have some big-name guest on my show. I say, look, would you accept this refutation of a universe from nothing from some 13-year-old Pisha, you know, as my grandfather used to say? May he rest in peace? No, you wouldn't accept that. Why not?

Because he hasn't done the research. He hasn't had enough experience. But here you are accepting this refutation of the existence of God based on the testimonials in the evidence of a 13-year-old, I, E.U, 50, 60 years ago. It's infantile. You would never do it. And so I think it's intellectually dishonest. I agree. I mean, I think, you know, to take sort of this other side, which is not just a devil's advocate position, but I think that one of the problems is that so many of us, as humans, confuse religion with God. And we confuse the limitations of humans, which in many cases, you know, like call it the patriarchy, call it capitalism.

There's many, many reasons why large structures that involve rules, restrictions, allegiance, and membership don't tend to meet the needs of people as a whole. And so this is sort of what I think is important and what we love about speaking to all kinds of physicists in particular, is that there is a pattern in the universe that does not care who you bow down to. And there's a pattern in the universe that doesn't care whether you believe in gravity or not. And there's a pattern in the universe that has a rhythm to a feeling inside of you that is the feeling of, right? And it's when you see beautiful mountains. It's when you see a child being born.

It's when you see someone die. It's when you see someone on the side of the road and their body is broken. That feeling in you that you are alive, that does not care. It doesn't care. And so this notion of like, oh, religion's killed so many people. No, people have killed a lot of people in the name of religion. That's not the oneness that we're looking to see in the fractal patterns of the universe. That notion of like, oh, you know, when we have biologists and psychologists telling us, like, find that feeling in yourself that makes you feel like something is blooming, something is alive.

Like, that's true with a capital T. And depending on where your DNA landed you and who raped too and who ended up where in terms of your genetic line, you're scattered all over this messy, messy world. For like a fraction of a nothing here, right, after 1130 p.m. 1159 p.m. that we, you know, appeared on the calendar. But also this notion of like there's beauty, there's shards of light, right, in the kind of Kabbalistic tradition. There's shards of light that are scattered all over the universe, and we get to bring them back. And you get to look through a telescope made by a three-de- like what? And you're looking at these shards and bringing them back together. And everybody gets to do it in their own way.

Like no one has that right. And any person who tells you they know what God wants is not to be listened to. Anyone who says you cannot question it, even if it is your religion, quote-unquote, or their religion, If you cannot falsify it and you can't assert that it may be fallible, then to me it's like a hobby with a yarmika and some cougal on Saturdays, right? It's no more than that. Well, and Buddha said, believe nothing. Believe nothing, even if I say it unless it is true. I mean, I'm roughly paraphrasing, but unless it is true for you, unless you find comfort in it. And that's like what's, even when we spoke to Sadfay, right?

She was raised in one tradition. She found truth in another. But it doesn't mean there was a betrayal. It's all just one. And if you pull far enough back, if you pull light ears back, right, it's all the same. Like, that's the oneness. Maybe what you were asking before, John, I wish it was to say, like, if this is sort of dovetailing with science, then, you know, what happens if you found scientific evidence,

you know, that God doesn't exist or, you know, like, would you, my son asked me that the other day, You know, would you abandon the Torah? Would you abandon Judaism? And I said, no. I said, they're completely different things to me. And yes, if you can find something, you know, I don't believe, as most people do, I think that there's so much harm done by these professional religious clerics in our world. Maybe it's the rabbis of the Talmud or whatever.

But the notion that we can't question them, I say is complete nonsense. In fact, I quote in my book, it's actually religiously forbidden to do what I do according to the Talmud, because it says about, you know, what came at the beginning of time you may ask, but what came before those days, you're forbidden to ask. And I say, good thing they weren't grading my NSF grant, you know, because I probably wouldn't have gotten it. You know, so I hate the notion of questions that you can't ask. There's a whole bunch of questions you can't answer, and that's my job, is to either be

wrong or fail and not be able to answer something, right? But the notion that you can't question something, and there are some glib things like, you know, that were said, fine man or Carl Sagan, one of the two Jewish, you know, atheists that I've mentioned so far. I'd say, like, I'd rather have, you know, questions that I can't answer than answers I can't question. That's so simple. The very word, as you know, and maybe John, you know too, but the word Israel, it doesn't

mean submission to God. That's what Islam means. Israel means fights with God. You have to ask these questions, and you have to be open to the fact that your favorite pet theory about aliens or near-death experiences or, you know, consciousness and astroplans, and all the other stuff that you've talked about, many times with other guests that I might disagree with on a scientific factual basis. I can't disagree on an experiential basis, but I would disagree on a factual scientific empirical basis. Sure.

And they have to be open to that, too. You can't just assert these things and say, like, well, you have to believe it because I saw it with my own two eyes. I always say, like, the most dangerous words in science are not that, like, if I didn't see it, I wouldn't have believed it. It's if I. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by bi optimizers. We're very excited to share with you. Our new nighttime ritual, we tried magnesium breakthrough by optimizers, and we can say that this is definitely different. Most magnesium supplements have only one or two forms.

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I didn't believe it. I wouldn't have seen it. That's a lot of times what happens in science called confirmation bias. And it's the most pernicious, destructive force in all of science. Well, and it's also, that's what, you know, is sort of taking hold. And there's so many reasons to be, I don't mean to sound, you know, like I'm 90. There are so many reasons to be grateful for the technology we have for computers, for social media. But it's also made.

to my friend Candice Owens, please, because she doesn't believe, she thinks science is fake. No, but I think this notion that everyone is a scientist is not true. And if you see something, obviously, that doesn't mean that it's true. If lots of people say something, that also doesn't believe that it's true. So I think this is what we're interested in, especially, you know, and Scott Barry Kaufman is a friend of ours who's a cognitive scientist of Columbia. And, you know, what he and what we are interested in and what so many of us are interested in, in is if you cannot measure something the way you measure other things, right? If you're going to tell me that something like telepathy, right, or telepathic ability, if you're going to tell

me that it doesn't behave like anything that I can measure, you can't simultaneously be upset that people who like to measure things don't consider that there is proof for it. And there's many, many reasons why there are things that are difficult to replicate in a scientific setting. And as someone who used to do research, like, I know. The room is weird. It doesn't smell like home. Nothing seems normal. No one's going to behave like they do when you're in a lab, 100%.

But if you want a scientific community to engage, we need to have some way that we can have a shared language so that we can say, okay, this doesn't behave like testing the pH of, you know, this substance or, you know, this substance. whatever. I'm not going to, you can't weigh it. You can't do all the things you do to it. You can't run a PCR on it. But we have to find ways. And I believe that we will. I believe that there's just like we have technology now that allows us to see things, perceive things and experience things that we never thought possible. We're going to get refinement of that. At some point, you do get to say, this cannot be replicated. And as you said, you cannot challenge people's experience. But anecdotal

information is not the same as scientific data. Yeah, I think that's a big challenge to suggest to people, because people are used to thinking of the word theory. Like, it's just, oh, that's just your theory, that's your pet, you know, kind of hobby horse, you're just waxing. I don't know. In science, theory has a very, very specific modality of its usage. And to use it in the context of like, that's just your theory or, you know, like it's a

gas or, like, okay, you know what's a theory? The theory of general relativity. Have you ever used your GPS? Yeah. Well, then you're using the theory of general relativity because otherwise, will be off by hundreds of meters by the time you drove down the street. The theory of evolution. The theory of evolution, 100%. We have evidence for these things. They're not theories. They're not guesses. And could they be refuted? Yeah. I hope that they are refuted in some sense. I don't expect that they're

going to be overturned. Look, if we knew all the science, look, I always bring this up in one of my books that you have over there, right? I talk about the imposter syndrome because despite, as I said before, the stereotypes to the contrary, scientists are humans, right? And humans suffer oftentimes in the imposter syndrome. You guys have talked about this before. I'm suffering from it right now. Just in general. The imposter syndrome afflicts scientists in this way, and it's instructive to note that it does. Einstein had the imposter syndrome.

We think of him as the greatest scientist in human history, and how could he possibly have the imposter syndrome? He said, and I quote in that book, my third, second book, into the impossible, think like a Nobel Prize winner. I had interviewed, by the time I wrote that book, nine Nobel Prize winner, since then I've interviewed 23 and counting, almost as many as you guys. No, it's the one thing I can say I've done slightly more Nobel Prize winners than you have,

but I didn't win a Nobel Prize like Amy Fowler. But on the other hand, I talked to a Nobel Prize winner once named Barry Barish, here at Caltech. Barry won the Nobel Prize. Co-shared it for discovering gravitational waves from colliding black holes a billion light years away using the LIGO experiment.

Right? And he did that. And I talked to him at the end of every interview, I asked the same kind of, you know, it's like my conceit. I say, you know, what would you do? tell yourself at age 20 to give yourself the courage to do as you've done to go into the impossible. And he said, I tell myself to get over the imposter syndrome. And I said, you mean in the past?

He said, no, like right now. He said, Barry, you're in your late 70s. You just won the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago. You know, you're incredible. What are you talking about? And he goes, no, let me tell you something. You know, Brian, because you're never going to win a Nobel Prize after your first book. He said, no, he's a very avuncular. I love this guy. And he wrote the forward to this book. And he told me, and the stories, in that book. He said, Brian, when you win a Nobel Prize, you go to Stockholm, you have your reindeer supper, and you get dressed in the regalia of, you know, white coat and tails, and you get to meet the king of Sweden. And it's a huge, huge honor. It occurs not on Alfred Nobel's

birthday, but on his death day. Two days before yours, December 10th, he died in December 10th. You'd think you do it on his birthday. No, no, you do it on his death day. Why? Because he had a near death experience. Alfred Nobel had a near-death experience. It's the only one I believe. What? Alfred Nobel. You're not allowed to only believe in one. If you believe in one, you believe in them all.

Okay. So, Alfred Nobel was walking around Paris one day in 1889, I believe it was. He was walking around Paris. He was never married. I had no kids. Had a, you know, a partner, but he had no kids. No wife. And he was walking around. He saw a headline in the Parisian newspaper. It said, Alfred Nobel, the merchant of death is dead.

The man who killed more people than any other person in history because of his invention of dynamite, which was used in the Nobel Arms factories throughout Scandinavia and Russia. He killed more people. Now, he's reading his obituary, so as Mark Twain said, reports in my demise have been slightly exaggerated. It was his brother Ludwig who had died. So he realized at that moment, like Scrooge and many other people get that realization, a wonderful life. What's the guy's name?

It's a wonderful life, yeah. Bailey or, yeah, George Bailey. That he had a gift, a glimpse into how the world was going to remember him, and it was going to remember him as a scumbag arms dealer who killed people, right? So he resolved at that time to create a will, which would not only be for scientific discoveries, they had to very specifically be for the benefit of all humankind. And that's why it has one for peace and literature, also as chemistry and medicine, I mean, think about the first Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Wilhelm Lerenkin,

and it was awarded for the discovery of the X-ray. Think how many lives have been improved. Cancer's discovered, tumors, because of the X-ray, and that's what he wanted. So he had a near-death experience. When Barry won the Nobel Prize, Barry Barris, getting back to that, he goes to Stockholm, and you get this giant medal, not unlike the metal you're going to get in a little bit. Is that 3D-printed too? Foreshadowing, yes.

So you go there, you get this giant metal, solid gold. and you get a fraction or maybe the whole, $1.2 million, and you get a certificate and a painting of your faith. So it's a really splendid ceremony. And Barry showed it to me. He lives in Santa Monica, and he showed it. And he said, Brian, you have to sign this log book testifying that you did get your golden medal, your million dollars and your certificate so that people don't come back and say,

hang, yo, where's my money, you know, like that, right? So they make you sign a book. So he's a curious character, Barry is. So he turns the page and who won it before? And he looks back. He sees, you know, Marie Curie. He sees Richard Feynman at Caltech. And he sees Albert Einstein.

And he sees their actual signature from 1922, Albert's signature, staring him in the face, mocking him. And he says, I am not fit to be in the same universe as Albert Einstein. How could I possibly be in here? I'm an imposter. I don't belong here. I said, Barry, I've got good news and good news when we did our interview. I said, Barry, did you know that Einstein had the imposter syndrome?

he goes, you've got to be kidding me. He said, Isaac Newton contributed more to science. By the way, science was Newton's side hustle, right? He wrote more about alchemy and religion than he wrote about science. But anyway, and calculus, right? He said, Isaac Newton did more for science and math and all of human civilization than any man before or since, including Einstein. And I said, but that's not all, Barry, because Isaac Newton had the imposter syndrome. Now he said, oh, you've got to be, now you're just kidding me. How could Newton say that he had the imposter syndrome? And it turns out, Isaac Newton worshipped in many ways Jesus Christ, so much so that he tried to emulate him in all the ways that he could, which were very minuscule, right?

He couldn't turn loaves into fishes. He couldn't turn water into wine. The ultimate alchemist. But he could. You know what he could do? He could die a virgin. And he did. Now, some say his personality help with that.

What? He died a virgin, yes. Newton died a virgin. He said it was his greatest accomplishment. He was the most Christ-like as possible. Now, I don't know if Christ has a, you know, one of my professor friends made a joke about how do you choose your advisor in grad school? It's like it's just like it's more important who your advisor is than what you study. In that way, you want to try to emulate Jesus, right?

It's like who your advisor is. Yeah, I get it. I didn't say it was my joke. Okay. So in that case, yes, imposter syndrome is real. It affects scientists as much as any other person on earth. scientists and artist yeah absolutely right we're not good enough we're not right

let's pull back talk a little bit about you know the topic that I'm sure everybody asks you about is their life in the universe and you've you've kind of dropped some hints that there's so much specialness to us and also if there are trillions upon trillions of stars and planets and galaxies and all the things

how on earth right outside of a religious explanation that we're chosen by God which we're going to set aside How on earth are we supposed to sort of conceptualize this? Because you bring them how on earth because one of the places that I had probably the most weird, bizarre, unusual, but also almost transformational religious experience was at the bottom of the world at the South Pole in Antarctica. Antarctica is a continent, which means that if you drill down deep enough under the ice, under the snow, you hit rock. It's an actual honest-to-goodness continent. Unlike the North Pole. If you drill down on ice, there you go the ocean, right?

The North Pole or ocean. There's whales and things. There's Santa Claus. You kill him. You kill Mrs. Claus, but the elves die. That's horrible. But I've been there. And it's a size of about, you know, about a third of the United States.

It's a huge continent, okay? When I'm there, I could be like, you know, I was, in fact, the only, like, practicing Jew on an entire continent, okay? You know, say what you want about the Middle East or whatever. Like, you know, there's Jews everywhere, right? There's Habad there. There's no Habad at the bottom of the world at South Pole. I was the only one there, right? and it's just incredible to think about how desolate it is.

There's only 235 other people there in the entire part of the South Pole where I was. And it's 700 miles away from civilization where there's a whopping thousand people. So the whole continent, there's 1,000, maybe 1,200 people at maximum in the summertime, which is when I'm there, the sun's up all the time. All the time. The sun's up all the time. After the beginning of summer. How do you know when you do a night night?

It's very difficult, actually, to sleep there. is almost impossible. You're at high elevation, 9,000 feet above sea level, so you have to pee all the time. And it's bright. The sun just makes a circle around the sky, 24 hours a day,

seven days a week, until eventually on March 1st, it goes below the horizon. That's the first day of fall at the South Paltz, first seasons, right? Yeah, yeah. And it comes up on September 21st,

the first day of fall here, spring there. So it's not, but it doesn't get pitch dark, right? And the sun sets here, it doesn't go black, right? So it's like,

but it does go pitch dark or on July. Anyway, I'm not there in July. My wife doesn't like it, right? I have chores to do. So at the South Pole, there's a thousand people, called a thousand people there. Now, it's one seventh of the Earth's landmass surfaces, continents, right? So you'd expect roughly, if you just had a Bayesian, he just had a probabilistic estimate,

how much of the population, it should be about a billion people that live there. No, there's not. So when people make these arguments that there's a trillion stars in our own galaxy, and each one has 10 planets or David Kipping, my friend David Kipping was on recently talking about, the possibility is not probability. Okay, we have zero evidence that UAPs are actually coming from other civilizations that are advanced technologically somehow don't make it past the 4 or 5 and, you know, crash off Santa Catalina Island and do tick-tac maneuvers. Also, why are they crashing? They don't know how to drive.

It's like they made it here. He was saying, you know, your most recent guest, Kevin Canuth, who's a wonderful, you know, a physicist and a brilliant guy, you know, saying that these things defy the laws of physics, they live one light day away from the earth and then they come and visit the earth. Okay, you know what else is one light day away almost? Or one day away, you know, China, right? So let's leave aside those things. But possibility of life, I admit, there's possibility, there's possibility there could be a billion people in Antarctica. There's more than enough room, but there's not, okay? So you have to deal and confronted by a brutal fact that your anecdotes, your estimates, they're worthless. We have a sample of one. And from statistics, you know, if you do a calculation statistics, oftentimes you have one over the number minus one, right?

So you compute the standard deviation, you compute the average. So n minus one for n equals one is zero, so you blow up, right? You cannot compute an expectation from a sample of one. Now, if we found life somewhere else, even on Mars, okay, our closest and most earthlike of our celestial neighbors in the habitable zone, could have liquid water on it, has a lot of raw materials on it, did have liquid water, had flowing rivers and mountains and all sorts of volcanic activity. We see no evidence of life.

We see no evidence of technology there. although reportedly when they sent one of the rovers into the caves there in Mars, they found inscription. You guys heard about this on the walls of the Martian lava cave? You didn't hear that?

It had just four words. Please like and subscribe. Come on. You got to know that that's what we're going to find on Mars. Now, speaking of Mars, I like to use this as an example. This is one of your many gifts today. This, Mayam, is a piece of Mars.

Oh. So I've talked to Elon Musk on my podcast. The only guest maybe that you guys haven't had. And he wants to die on Mars. I hope you don't die on impact. I've heard he wants to go to Mars, but he doesn't want to die there. It's almost impossible if he could even go there that he wouldn't die there. It's not like going to the moon.

This is an honest of goodness fragment of the planet Mars. Okay? Wow. I brought the provenance certificate for you. And this is yours to keep. I gave one, I have to say, I gave one to Joe Rogan, but he smoked it. And I have a feeling you're not going to do that, Miami. So I'm going to give this to you.

You can touch another piece. of another world. Okay? I mean... Now, how did this get here? Oh, it looks like shale. Yeah. Like, it looks like a very smooth.

It's got shiny. It's been sliced from a bigger sand. I'm assuming, but I'm saying it looks like a rock. Yes. Yeah, Jonathan, take a look. Oh, it's got a little bumpy edge. It's got a bumpy edge. It looks kind of like cheese, like a fancy cheese when it's got white on the outside.

Oh, free? No, but like the fancier kind. Oh, okay. Wow. Don't take it out of its face. Get your greasy hands on it. Now it has life on it. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It really is. And you look at it. Now, how did it get here? You might wonder, how did it get here? Any theories? Elon didn't bring it back?

Not yet. Panspermia. It got here via the 405. No, it got here panspermically. The way the pen sperm is, I love pen spermia. It's like frost on the pumpkin. It sounds dirty. It's not dirty.

It's a legitimate scientific word. What is pan spermia for the, for the listeners and viewers. Penspermia is a theory that life on Earth originated from outside the Earth and was brought here by rocks, meteors, meteorites, and other things that land here. So what I like this sample for, and the reason I collect samples of Mars and the moon and other things, is because it shows us that not only is our planet active, our solar system's active. We've been exchanging material with all the planets in the solar system since the time

in which the solar system really coagulated out of the primalized. sub of our solar system. All. Pretty much all of them. I mean, it's hard to get out to Pluto.

Right. When you guys talked to Neil deGrasse Tyson, you know, he's still kind of, you know, crowing about that. But, but yeah,

so it's far away, but time keeps on ticking. And we have no limit to how much has been exchanged. This meteorite came as a big, bigger sample found in Northwest Africa. The certificate is embedded

inside this telescope, so you'll never forget it. And it shows it was found in Northwest Africa. It has the chemical composition of parts of Mars that have been surveyed with the Mars has surveyors that fly around it, rovers that dig into it and its composition.

And the reason that looks red is because it has a certain amount of iron in it. So it's basically a rusting planet. So we look at it, this will under certain conditions look reddish. And so the planet Earth and Mars have been exchanging material for literally billions of years. And some of that period of time was during the time that Mars had flowing water on it. Right. So it's almost inconceivable that we wouldn't find some evidence of life on Mars that could have come from the Earth to Mars. Right.

They could have. Now, people always assume the interesting thing that came backwards. It came from Mars to Earth, and that's where it started. But right now we have no evidence for it. We have no evidence whatsoever. So the possibility of it, I admit, there's a huge possibility of it. Every couple of years, people, like, when I was listening to David Kipping on your show, he's just a brilliant guy, wonderful YouTube channel as well, great educator. You know, he almost looks like forlorn, you know, that he can't say, like, scream for the rooftops. And that is a very dangerous situation to be in. He and I have talked about this. Because you have this temptation to, you have this temptation to, you know, in science, find what you're seeking to find. The most dangerous words in science are when you say something like Eureka, I have found it, like Archimedes said, because you're basically demonstrating that you had a preconceived outcome. And in that case, you're no different than the apologeticist, the Christian apologists, the Jewish apologists, that will say that everything has a creator and therefore the universe can't come from nothing.

It too must have been created. So that's an argument from apologetics. And in this case, though, when we talk about aliens and we say, well, they could get here, but, you know, they defy the laws of physics to get here. Well, I'm a physicist. You know, I can do the DRAQ equation. You know, I can show you, you know, where the experimental evidence does in calibration. You know, why aren't you talking to me? And when they convene panels like that, they convened panels, my friend David Spurgel is the President Simon's Foundation. We started the Simon's Observatory together. And, you know, he convened this panel for NASA,

this blue ribbon panel that found 95% of phenomena could be explained. There's 5% that could. And so then the true believers, many of which I've had on my show, I believe, that they've seen stuff, I believe that they've experienced them. That, as you said before, the plural of anecdote is not data, right? It is experiences. But, and you know, taste is not disputable, right? So in this case, we have to look, are those five percent of things? Do they hide all the actual phenomena? I call that the aliens of the gaps. You know, it's like the God of the gaps. Like you can explain everything using God, you know, you just insert it there, but science keeps on progressing. Like you said before, you know, that we could find evidence for all these

different phenomena, including near-death experiences. It's true. A hundred years ago, I couldn't do what I'm doing now because we didn't have the technology. Technology, but you can't say future technology will allow us to fill in the gaps that we currently don't understand when it comes to things like aliens and so forth. But it is plausible, you know, that life could have originated on Mars or on Earth. Those are plausible, but we have no evidence for it, right? Doesn't mean we stop looking for it.

How do you feel about the simulation theory? Ah, so I think that's part of the reason I'm here. My friend Rizwan Verk was here. Oh, we love them. I love him too. Yeah, he's such a sweetheart. Simulation with hypothesis is also a very deistic kind of approach to things. There's a master simulator, perhaps.

There's a base layer of reality. There's an operating system, which is kind of like the Torah, you know, for me. And so when I think about it, you know, there are a whole host of different reasons, you know, questions that I'd want to ask, you know, the master simulator. I think it's an interesting speculation. I'm not as, you know, simulation maxed as Neil deGrasse Tyson is, basically. there are ways to spot, for example, evidence of it or, you know, basically the need in the simulation hypothesis would be for infinite storage, infinite memory, and it's an extrapolation of what humanity has constructed, right?

Wait, what evidence, I mean, I know the kind of conceptual evidence of, you know, people who have NDE's saying, like, I was shown that I chose this and it's a program and we're all just like in VR headsets all the time and we just don't know it and like this is real. We think, but it's really not. What other evidence am I looking for that you would like? For the simulation I'm on them? Sure. Well, again, you're not going to prove it.

Like, there's no glitches. It's not like the matrix. But that's the glit. The glitch is the thing. If you have a glitch, right, that could be used as evidence for something, right? Sure. But you can't say that the absence of a glitch is evidence against it, right? True, true.

So how do we subject it to some. Because some people are like, oh, planes fall out of the sky. I'm like, that doesn't seem like a glitch. I mean, it seems like horrible and tragic and something that shouldn't happen. but like, I don't know, in this simulation. Mine be Alex breakdown is supported by OneSkin. Whether you try every new skincare product or you've been using the same things for years,

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Right, right. You asked before, you know, why do bad things happen to good people? I always say, well, like, what's worse? Why do bad things happen to good people? Or when good things happen to bad people, which irritates you more? Sure. But so are either one of those evidence for simulation? Okay, so, but if you wrap it up, I mean, there is no atheist.

Even Dawkins, even, you know, Stephen Hawking, even, you know, Stephen Hawking, even Harris, they can't refute the proposition that God is creating and rendering reality. So, too, you can't refute the proposition. Now, you have to ask what are the physical constraints on it, just like you would ask them on God, too. Now, God gets out of it because he is omnipotent, he is omniscient, and so forth and so on, right? Subject to certain limitations, like humans have free will and all the classic arguments that limit his power, which I think are interesting and worth exploring. But again, at the end of the day, it has to be subject to not proof but falsification. I don't see many ways that you could falsify it. That doesn't mean it exists,

like Neil said. Neil said, I find it hard to disagree with it. Well, that is a sign, you know, perhaps of the limitation of the one who's probing it, right? I don't give up and say, well, like, I don't think I could prove that the multiverse doesn't exist. I'm going to try to prove that it doesn't exist. Wherever that takes me, even if it takes me into a situation that makes it in tension with the Bible or some religious doctrine. There's something in the news that we wanted to just ask you about and you're kind of the first person that we've had on, you know, since this became part of the news cycle. There's been, and I don't know if it's like, you know, kind of observation bias also. There's been a group of recent like deaths and disappearances of certain scientists that have been

linked to nuclear research, to aerospace programs, you know, and, you know, for a lot of people, the answer is not sort of like aliens. It's usually like a secret of government. or possibly an adversarial government, do you have opinions about when those things kind of break through the worlds? And there's something conspicuous going on. The government has already admitted that there's not been transparency, which we shouldn't be surprised because, like, you know, it's the government. And I would say that for any administration. Like, the structure of the government is made for secrecy and, you know, lunacy. But what do you make of that? Does that mean anything to you? Does it give you pause? Well, I was really troubled recently, a very good scientist that I respect and admire in a lot of ways. She kind of promoted one of these deaths as evidence of a cover-up, perhaps, of UAP phenomena, that this scientist who is working in Chile had worked on phenomena to detect anomalous signatures of flashing lights that were seen first reported in data recently the data was collected in the 1950s before the space program. And it had sort of the appearance of like solar panels or so, way before solar panels were invented, A, and way before the space program even was a thing even on the Russian side.

Is that proof that aliens are visiting here? Absolutely not. However, I didn't like that, and I'm not going to name her, but the fact was she was conflating the fact that the scientist who died that he was working on technology that could have detected the existence of these craft currently, implying perhaps that he was murdered, right, by some force. some government didn't want his truth to get out, blah, blah, blah, when in reality, the scientists went for a walk in the Otocommate Desert, which is where our Simon's Observatory is located. It's an incredibly desolate place. They actually use it as a simulator for Mars because it's the driest desert on Earth in many ways.

It's extremely high altitude, extremely rocky and desolate. And he went hiking this guy, older guy, with like, you know, half a water bottle, and he was found without any clothes on. And they were like, this is proof of it. Like, there's apparently some phenomenon. maybe neuroscientists like you, can I explain it? But when people are in the desert and unforgiving, even though it could be very cold or very hot, they start to do things like they take off their clothes or maybe he was doing something. And he fell to his death. And it was obvious that he did.

And yes, they're doing some, they're still following up on some anomalies and perhaps his thing. And he had a fight with a student the day before. Look, I'm like, guys, this is nonsense. This is tragedy. And you're exploiting it to generate uncertainty and bias and mistrust in the government. Look, I have a healthy distrust for government. My brother-in-law is a recon marine. Okay, he's like the toughest guy on steroids that you ever met. And this guy has been to Afghanistan 39 times. And he's just like the bravest person I've ever known.

True Patriot, just a great guy. He's been waterboarded. He's been tortured. He's been left to die by the government intentionally because they're trying to test him and prove his medal. And he succeeded every single time. And he even defers and says, I am not even as worthy as some of my colleagues, some of them give the ultimate sacrifice, right? So I'm under no illusions that our government doesn't test people and trick people and do things.

But could that not be an explanation for why we're seeing all these things and pilots in the Air Force and the Navy see these things? And maybe they're being tested. Maybe their loyalties are being proven. Maybe there's adversaries that are trying to do it. The first explanation should not be the apologetic answer. It shouldn't be like what the Christian and Jewish apologists do, which is to explain an anomaly based on assuming the cause to be. begin with. That's not scientific. I'm going to ask one more question before we say goodbye. I have an unnatural obsession with cattle mutilations because the cattle mutilations. I actually, no, but there are these

cattle mutilations where bizarre organs are cut out. There is no evidence of how someone is arriving in these places cutting out like tongues. I mean, Valerie is going to back me on this one. cutting out like tongues and ovaries, like bizarre incisions. And to me, it's like whatever's happening, can someone just explain it so we can stop thinking and wondering? And the fact is, when things are not explained, you get all sorts of wonderings. And when you have an internet and you have ability for people to communicate, it breeds a lot of suspicion.

I think similarly to that is the idea of these energy weapons, which 60 Minutes recently did the exposeon where people had these horrific physical problems and were attacked in some way. And it was said, oh, you're making it up, you're going crazy. And then they discover the technology that we couldn't have understood scientifically. So like there's this gap between science wants these explanations and wants proof naturally and things that we cannot understand based on our current observable data that are hard to explain or may be very real. I think they could be impossible to explain for, you know, almost the entire population, except for maybe a cadre of individual scientists.

Don't forget, you know, as Arthur C. Clark, who's the namesake giver of my podcast, he said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And in the sense that you come upon some new technology, my favorite example is the following. During World War II, everyone's familiar at the Manhattan Project. But there was an equal and opposite program going on at MIT and in the UK to develop radar. This was like an incredible weapon that we were able to use, not only for detecting things, but actually for doing espionage, for doing spoofing. So one of the things that Louis Alvarez, who later went on to win the Nobel Prize, and he was also the one who came up with the theory that the Chixilub meteor, which struck the Earth 66 million years ago, was the resulted in the death of the dinosaurs. So he and the sun worked on this together.

Anyway, he was one of the greatest geniuses of the last century. He came up with this idea. When the Germans are looking for our planes coming in, they're sending radio waves out. They had some basic radar as well. So if we spoof them, we can send the following. Because signals go down as the inverse square of the distance, we transmit a signal as we're getting closer, that gets weaker as the inverse square. So it kept getting weaker and weaker.

And they said, oh, the planes are flying away. And then they drop a bomb on them. Now, if you were a German soldier and you were looking, you'd say, this thing was moving away from us and then it bombed us. It moved faster than the speed of light, i.e., it defied the laws of physics. Or as my toddler used to say, it defied the laws of fixits.

Fix it. That's kind of makes sense. So there are many things. I'm sure we don't understand. Catamulation is the military. There's no blood and they've taken out the tongue and all of the organs with surgical precision. Why is there no blood? Well, you're a vegan. So anything, even me having a sandwich out of this is going to upset you.

I love Kevin Canuth. I think I'm pronouncing it right. Yeah. The one thing that bothered me about that wonderful interview that you guys did, is he led off by saying in 1968, when he was at Montana State University, there was a series of cattle mutilations, and that got me kind of interested in anomalous things that nobody could understand. And I thought, well, now I'm starting to learn. And I wouldn't have known it if you guys hadn't asked him about it. And so, well, I have

no special expertise. And I think a good scientist, I don't know, but it did illuminate something about his psychology, which I'm not going to say is good or bad. I'm just saying it helped me understand him on a psychological level better. We should have you back to review all of our episodes. Yes, seriously. This is like, this is amazing. Come on, guys. You guys are blowing my mind.

Wait, I want to present you with the final thing. Go ahead. So you know Annie Farrah Fowler. She won the Nobel Prize. Correct. And I've lost five Emmys. So you and I are both losers in real life. We could do that.

We could do that, right? But you can't write losing the Nobel Prize. So my, so on my podcast, which is named after Arthur C. Clark's, he had many statements, many aphorisms, one of which was the magic, you know, Any sufficiently advanced technology is extinguishable for magic. Another one was for every expert. There's an equal and opposite expert, which I like to drop on my department chair from time to time. And then he said, the only way of knowing the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Got it.

And at UC San Diego, I founded, along with my colleagues and friends, the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. And I started the podcast during COVID like you guys did because authors couldn't go on book tours. And I'm an author. And I love to support authors and thinkers like Nobel Prize winners. And so we have a guest that come from all different domains. But you've been an inspiration, both of you guys, your podcast. So I'm going to present you with the Keating Medal, not a Nobel Prize, but it's a Keating Medal for Impossible Imagination.

And it's got your name on there. I love that. And this is for you, Jonathan. This is a meteorite, which I said before, is the afterbirth, if you like, of the star that died to make our earth. And inside of this is highly magnetic iron, nickel, cobalt. And I actually give these away on my website. Anyone with a .edu email address can win one.

And so maybe if you put it in the show notes, whatever. But this is highly magnetic, too. And the beautiful thing about this is that the iron in this meteorite is the same as the iron in the hemoglobin molecules in our blood. So these are truly connected. And if you take the metal and you look on the back where the monolith is from 2001 in Space Odyssey, you recognize that. By the way, you know that podcast comes from that movie? Didn't know that. So there was an engineer at Apple named Vinny Shariko.

and he developed the iPod. And when he developed the iPod, he said, we should call it the iPod. Because it looks like the, remember the circle on it? It looks like the eye on Hal from 2001 a space artist. No way. And Steve Jobs loved it. And they call it the iPod. And today we're on a podcast.

Wow. So it's all thanks to Arthur C. Clark. Okay. So if you look here, this is magic. It's magic. That's amazing. And it's proof that cattle mutilations are from aliens. Wow.

Thank you so much. This is really special. Thank you guys for being. We didn't even get to get into these incredible books and really the personal stories and transformations, really, that lead to the leaders who have impacted the world in such an incredibly significant way. And even though you have not won a Nobel Prize, we just, we think you're amazing and we're so grateful to have you here. Please tell people where they can find out more about you, obviously, your books, all the things. I have a podcast and a substact, kind of aping, emulating you, the simulation hypothesis of my ambiolics. Yeah, so YouTube channel, podcast, books, Brian Keating.com.

Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. I really feel like we were just getting started with Dr. Keating. For more on this conversation, check out the exclusive content on Substack, My Ambialyx Breakdown on Substack. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's My Ambialyx Breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience Ph.D. or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's gonna break it down. Mind Bialx Breakdown is supported by Elastique, where science meets style in wearable wellness.

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