Caught between the Moon and New York City (Publishing Houses)

Caught between the Moon and New York City (Publishing Houses) Dear Magicians, I just got back from my third trip from San Diego to the East Coast in as many weeks. This time, I was in New York City. Maybe for the last time in a long while. The city felt different—edgier, more uncertain, as if the very air was charged with the anxiety of what’s coming next. I stayed on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by the storied facades of publishing houses that once defined literary ambition. It’s impossible not to remember the first time I walked these streets as a newly minted author, contract in hand, head full of the mythology of publishing for my first book, Losing the Nobel Prize.​ In 2017, Ind thought I knew what I was walking into—the grand lobbies, the marble, the sense of entering a cathedral of ideas. I imagined myself as a character in the golden age of publishing—editors in tailored suits, writers with ink-stained fingers, the whole city humming with the energy of creation. That’s the story we’re sold, isn’t it? That prestige is substance that the correct address and the right logo on your book spine are a kind of intellectual validation. Wrong. The reality was a little different. I remember taking the elevator up to the fiftieth floor, rehearsing my pitch, my gratitude, my best impression of someone who belonged. I asked a security guard for directions to my editor’s office—Jeff Shreve, associate acquiring editor at one of the most respected houses in the world, W.W. Norton. The helpful guard pointed me thusly: “Go around two corners and hang a left. That’s his office”. I followed his instructions, only to find myself staring at a janitor’s closet. This can’t be right. I thought I’d made a mistake. I hadn’t. Jeff’s office was, in fact, the janitor’s closet. Broom, mop, cleaning supplies, and all. This was the office of a gatekeeper to my literary legitimacy. The symbolism was almost too on-the-nose. Substance over size? Or just the slow decay of an institution that still trades on its reputation long after the reality has changed? Within months, Jeff left the firm. He was too smart to stay. He struck out on his own, independent, unencumbered by the trappings of prestige. I was left with a question that still haunts me: What, exactly, are we buying when we chase institutional validation? Is it access? Is it credibility? Or is it just the comfort of a story we want to believe? You know this feeling. We all do. The Bonfire of the Gatekeepers When my first book, Losing the Nobel Prize, finally found a home, it was after nineteen rejections. One publisher said yes. I was elated—briefly. The book sold over 20,000 copies, earned hundreds of reviews, and, most importantly, found its way into the hands of readers who left thoughtful, sometimes life-changing feedback. It changed lives, mine and my readers. But the process left me with a persistent sense of disillusionment. Here’s what nobody tells you: The most significant benefit of traditional publishing isn’t the prestige, the marketing muscle, or even the editorial guidance. It’s the legal department. I learned this the hard way. I fought for my title—Losing the Nobel Prize—and won. It’s not a forgone conclusion that a first-time author gets to choose their own title, I would later learn. But I compromised on the cover. The publisher chose a photograph: BICEP2 at the South Pole, under a sky alive with aurora. Beautiful, evocative, and, as it turned out, radioactive. But the publisher’s legal team discovered they’d bought rights from someone who didn’t own them. The real owner wanted the cover pulled. Devastating? At first, yes. The publisher had to halt production, recall books, and commission a new cover. For a first-time author, this should have been a career-ending fiasco. But here’s the twist: Embedded in my contract was a clause I’d barely noticed. Any new edition—paperback, audiobook, revised hardcover—required a new launch, new publicity, and a new book tour. The legal disaster forced a second release, a second round of attention, a second chance. Sales spiked. I landed on major podcasts, including Ben Shapiro’s Sunday Special. The new cover photo, taken by a scientist who actually wintered at the South Pole, was even better. The Physics of Prestige There’s a physics to institutional prestige. Like potential energy, it’s stored in the architecture, the rituals, the stories we tell about who gets to belong. But when you open the box—Schrödinger’s publisher, if you will—you find the cat is both alive and dead. The prestige is real, but hollow. The gatekeepers are sharing offices with mops. Think about that. We’re trained to believe that the right imprimatur is a kind of career insurance. That if you just get the right logo on your CV, the right publisher on your book, the right journal for your paper, you’ll be safe. But safety is an illusion. The real value is in the work itself—and in your ability to metabolize setbacks into momentum. After that experience, I chose to self-publish my next three books. Not because I wanted to be a rebel, but because I’d seen behind the curtain. The machinery of prestige is just that—machinery. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it breaks down. But it’s never a substitute for substance. What Are You Walking Past? I used to walk past those grand Mad Men-appointed publisher lobbies and feel envy. Now I see them for what they are: monuments to a past that no longer exists. The real work happens in the margins, in the closets, in the places nobody thinks to look. The real value is in the conversations with readers, the honest reviews, the moments when someone tells you your book changed the way they see the world. Regret has a structure. It’s information. The question is whether you’re willing to use it. So, what are you walking past? What stories about prestige, legitimacy, or safety are you still buying? What would you

When civilization fails (and it will)

When civilization fails (and it will) Dear Magicians, It was 10am on last Sunday in Los Angeles. My impossible mission: inspiring 12-14 year old kids about science. Tough gig! But I was excited for the challenge and fully expecting to get the full “Hollywood Experience” when it was over. Instead, what I got was a gut punch. I was at Museum of Tolerance in LA to give a talk to a wonderful group called AKLA, a community education initiative that spotlights Jewish heritage and modern innovation through themed programs in cinema, startups, security, medicine, and remembrance. It was an honor—equal parts cosmology and community, where the universe’s grand narrative found a local audience with remarkable curiosity. I took my kids who know their role — pass out meteorites and act as astronomical ambassadors. After the talk, I sat for an interview and then was planning to hit up The Shanghai Garden restaurant [if you know, you know] after taking a lightning tour led by a brilliant young docent named Sonia. Problem was, after the tour, I all but lost my appetite. Now, if you know me, such an occurrence isn’t normal. The museum doesn’t pull punches. It starts with 1930s Germany—a society at the absolute peak of human achievement. Science. Art. Philosophy. Music. This was the most sophisticated culture on Earth. And then it shows you how that same culture became a factory for mass murder. The Paradox Here’s what’s disturbing. The Jews in Germany weren’t outsiders. They were Germans. Deeply assimilated. They contributed massively to the intellectual, scientific and cultural life of the nation. They believed in the Enlightenment. In reason. In progress. They thought civilization would protect them. It didn’t. The museum lets you eavesdrop on conversations from that time. Ordinary people. Scientists. Bureaucrats. Soldiers. Neighbors. Each one making small compromises. Small rationalizations. Whispering. Scared, but hoping for the best. Optimistic…mostly. The Machinery of Evil The Holocaust wasn’t carried out by psychopaths alone. Sure, there were sadists. But by far, most of the perpetrators were normal folks. Parents. Retirees. Engineers. Doctors. People like you. People like me. People who went home to their families at night. Hannah Arendt called this the banality of evil. And she was right. The gas chambers were designed with precision. Bureaucratic efficiency. The kind of problem-solving you’d apply to any industrial process. Except the product was death. What This Means for Science I study physics. I believe in the power of science to transform our world. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: scientific progress doesn’t guarantee moral progress. It actually is irrelevant to it. Germany had the best physicists in the world. The most advanced chemistry. Cutting-edge engineering and industry. And it used all of that sophistication to industrialize genocide. Fritz Haber invented a process that feeds billions of people today via the industrial production of fertilizer. He also pioneered chemical weapons and insisted on witnessing their lethality in the trenches of WWI. He was a Jew, but above all, a proud assimilated German whose factories would later produce Zyklon-B gas to exterminate members of his own family. Our Moment We live in an age of staggering technological power. Artificial intelligence. Gene editing. Synthetic biology. Surveillance systems that would make the Stasi weep with envy. We can do almost anything now. The question is: should we? And who decides? Social media algorithms optimize for engagement. Sounds neutral. But engagement often means enragement. Division. Radicalization. We built tools that can tear societies apart. And we did it by accident. Or maybe we just didn’t care enough to stop it. Maybe there is time left to do so. Maybe not. No Safety in Sophistication The museum ends with the gas chambers. No redemption arc. No inspiring message about human resilience. Just the brutal fact: this happened. In the most advanced society on Earth. That’s the lesson. Being smart doesn’t make you good. Being cultured doesn’t make you moral. Being “civilized” doesn’t protect you from barbarism. The Nazis had PhDs and Nobels. What We Owe the Dead I left that museum thinking about responsibility. We can’t just build powerful technologies and hope for the best. We can’t hide behind claims of neutrality. Every tool has consequences. Every innovation reshapes the world. The scientists who built the atomic bomb understood this. Some of them, anyway. Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life wrestling with what he’d created. We need more of that wrestling. More discomfort. More honest conversation about what we’re building and why. The Bottom Line The Museum of Tolerance exists because we need to remember. Not just the Holocaust. But what it reveals about human nature. About the fragility of civilization. About how quickly things can fall apart when we stop paying attention. No society is safe by default. Progress isn’t inevitable. The arc of history doesn’t bend toward justice and peace on its own, despite what people like Steven Pinker might assert. We have to contort it ourselves. That’s the work. That’s what we owe the dead. And each other. Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance Cosmology & the Mind / Halloween & Hoodoo In this new episode of Real Talk, I discuss everything from the Big Bang theory, UFOs, and moon-landing denial to the existence of God and why good science means “trust—but verify.” ​Watch my episode on Real Talk here! Genius Isaac Asimov’s 768-page Understanding Physics is a grand tour of motion, sound, heat, light, magnetism, and electricity—taught in their natural historical habitat. It left me with a deeper grasp of physics than four years of mechanical engineering and, scandalously, it was delightful to read. I’m sorry the only editions available are nearly $200 — so skip that and watch my episode of The Scientists featuring Isaac Asimov here. Image ​ 3I/ATLAS survived its close approach to the sun! Does that make the case against it being a comet stronger? Find out here in my latest episode with Avi Loeb. Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=4BZnxf8jcIs In this paparazzi-worthy episode I take down

Getting Fired Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

Getting Fired Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me Dear Magicians, There’s something nobody discusses at scientific conferences. Something that might be the most important thing that ever happens to you. Failure. Or more precisely—getting fired. It was for me. What Actually Happened I was fired from my first postdoc — at one of the best universities on earth — Stanford. It was my dream job that devolved into a nightmare. It was 2000, Silicon Valley was booming = not ideal for a postdoc making $32,000/year. Fired. It felt like watching my identity dissolve. Every assumption about myself, my capabilities, my bright future—gone. But here’s what’s interesting. That firing was probably the best thing that ever happened to my career and my life. We tell ourselves this story: Get good grades. Publish papers. Get tenure. Win awards. Linear progression. The reality? Funding disappears overnight. Brilliant people get sidelined by politics. Research programs evaporate because of elections, university whims, or just because someone changed their mind. Yet we persist in this delusion that failure is abnormal. It’s not. What Matters When you get fired, you have two choices. Treat it as evidence you’re not cut out for this. Or Treat it as data. Every failed experiment teaches you something. Why should careers be different? The most innovative scientists I know have all been fired or rejected. What distinguishes them isn’t the absence of failure. It’s their response to it. The Truth About Credentials Your PhD doesn’t matter as much as you think. Neither does your postdoc. Or that Nature paper. These aren’t magic talismans. Some of the most transformative work happens outside traditional institutions entirely. What to Do So you’ve been fired. Reflect, don’t ruminate. Understand what happened. Learn. Move on. Get real feedback. Not comfort, but unvarnished truth. Reframe everything. You’re not a failed scientist. You’re a scientist with data about what doesn’t work. Follow actual interests. Not what gets funded. What fascinates you at 2 AM? Double down on that. The Thing Nobody Says Success in science isn’t about avoiding failure. It’s about failing better. Every rejection is feedback. Every dead end teaches something. Every setback forces you to question hidden assumptions. These aren’t feel-good stories. They’re data points: The path to breakthrough is never linear. What Success Looks Like The most interesting scientists have weird CVs. Gaps. Detours. Papers nobody cites. But they’re doing the work that matters. Getting fired forces you to ask: What actually interests me? What assumptions am I making? What would I do if I couldn’t fail? Sometimes the best discoveries happen when you least expect them. Stay curious. Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance Cosmology & the Mind / Halloween & Hoodoo Come see me at Aish Talks on Nov 4 2025, in Manhattan. The event unites actor Michael Rapaport, musician Peter Himmelman, and journalist Ariella Noveck for an evening of Jewish wisdom, insight, and passion. Through TED-style talks and a cocktail reception we will explore how Torah ideas illuminate today’s challenges—addressing unity, truth, and resilience after October 7. Hosted by Aish, 7 PM EST, MCM Creative Studios. Tickets $108.55. Genius Wow. Scientists have found that Dinosaurs thrived in North America before the mass-extinction asteroid strike. Image What will become of these galaxies? NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. 📸Mike Adler Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=DDMB4-o34XM In this episode, I sit down with Michael Levin, distinguished biologist and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, for a mind-bending conversation that challenges everything we think we know about life. What if cells, taken from frogs or even human patients, could organize themselves into swimming biological robots—creatures with no genetic modifications that can heal neural wounds, self-replicate, and pursue goals in ways we’ve never seen before? Click here to watch! Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Sponsored This edition of the Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message is sponsored by Superhuman. Ever feel like your inbox is a black hole? No matter how much you scroll, the unread count just keeps growing. Deadlines vanish past the event horizon. That urgent collaborator message? It’s out there somewhere — but finding it is harder that herding thousands of Schrödinger’s cats. You’ve tried AI add-ons before. But let’s be honest — they’re slow, clunky, and the drafts sound like they were written by a grant reviewer who skimmed the abstract. Searching for one important email feels like scanning the cosmic microwave background, hoping your signal isn’t just dust. What if your inbox didn’t fight you… but worked for you? That’s the transformation with Superhuman: the leading AI-native email app. Superhuman thinks like your best executive assistant — one that never misses telescope time proposals, never forgets referee replies, and always knows what matters most. From thousands of unread emails to automatic organization: Auto Labels and Auto Archive clear the clutter. Split Inbox keeps urgent messages in focus. And Superhuman Calendar, Instant Event and Ask AI make scheduling seem like magic. From missed opportunities to automatic follow-ups: with Write with AI, drafts materialize faster than a pulsar heartbeat, perfectly in your voice. Auto Reminders and Auto Drafts mean you never drop the ball — even if your collaborators take their sweet time collapsing their wavefunction. This is the emotional shift I’ve experienced: from stressed and overwhelmed to in control and mentally clear. No more inbox singularity. Just focus, clarity, and time back to finally read the paper you’ve been citing without opening. Escape the gravitational well of email. Experience the Superhuman transformation. Get started with 1 month of free Superhuman today, using my link: https://try.sprh.mn/briankeating

The Cleveland Problem (Or: How I Learned to Stop Rushing and Notice the World)

The Cleveland Problem (Or: How I Learned to Stop Rushing and Notice the World) Dear Magicians, I went back to Cleveland last week. Strange. The city looked different this time. Not because Cleveland changed—I had. 32 years will do that. I was there to speak at the Marketing AI CONference, but really I was there to confront something I’d been avoiding: the weight of all those missed opportunities. The Blindness of Ambition Here’s what nobody tells you about college: you can walk past beauty every single day and never see it. I did. For four years at Case Western, I passed the Cleveland Botanical Gardens on my way to the physics lab. Never went in. Not once. The admission was $2.50. I told myself I couldn’t afford it. Nonsense. I couldn’t afford to notice it. My mind was elsewhere—on quantum mechanics, on grades, on some imagined future where everything would finally make sense. The Cleveland Museum of Art? Free admission. World-class collection. I went once during orientation. Never returned. Think about that. The Architecture of Regret Regret has a structure. It’s not just sadness about the past—it’s information. Data about who you were, what you valued, what you missed. Walking through campus with my son last week, I saw it clearly. The young physicist I’d been was so focused on escaping his present that he never actually lived in it. Financial pressures, academic stress, the constant anxiety of not being good enough—these things create a kind of tunnel vision. You know this feeling. We all do. What Changes My kids loved Cleveland. They dragged me through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Great Lakes Science Museum. Even those botanical gardens I’d ignored for years. My daughter found a chameleon from Madagascar. My son discovered a meditation garden tucked behind tropical plants. Joy. Simple joy at discovering something new. When did I lose that? When did curiosity become a luxury I couldn’t afford? The Paradox of Presence Here’s the thing about mindfulness—and I know how that word lands for some of you. Bear with me. Being present isn’t about meditation apps or breathing exercises. It’s about recognizing that your life is happening now, not after the next exam, not after tenure, not after you finally prove yourself. Now. The trajectory of my life—from nearly dropping out due to poverty, to scholarships, to Brown, Stanford, Caltech, to this moment—wasn’t linear. It couldn’t have been planned. But every missed opportunity taught me something about attention, about what matters, about the cost of always looking ahead. The Experiment Try this. Tomorrow, take a different route to work. Stop at that coffee shop you always pass. Visit that museum on campus. Talk to someone outside your field. Small moves. The point isn’t to become a different person. It’s to become aware of the person you already are—the one making choices every day about what to notice and what to ignore. What We’re Really Talking About This isn’t really about Cleveland. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves about scarcity. About time. About what we can afford to pay attention to. I thought I was too busy to explore. Too poor. Too focused on survival. Wrong. I was afraid. Afraid that if I stopped moving, stopped striving, I’d fall behind. That fear cost me experiences I can never recover. The Return Standing in those botanical gardens with my family, I felt something shift. Gratitude, maybe. Or just recognition. The boy who rushed past this place every day was doing his best. He didn’t know what he was missing. How could he? But I know now. And you? What are you walking past? Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance Cosmology & the Mind / Halloween & Hoodoo Three decades ago my father used to fall asleep listening to the OG, Art Bell on Coast-to-Coast AM. Now that he’s in heaven, he’s got local access to Art and the airwaves and will hopefully be listening to me TONIGHT, Wednesday at 10p Pacific Time/1a ET. Join me here and call in with your questions — I’ll be on for two hours discussing how the universe and the human mind reveal their deepest secrets when we learn to focus. I’ll share the mental frameworks that great scientists use to make sense of the cosmos, and research into the mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS and what it might tell us about the origins of our solar system.😂 Genius While I was taking in the musical genius of Jimi Hendricks at the rock and roll hall of fame I got notified of two audio awards I won thanks to your help! The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast won both a Bronze Medal for best science and education episode and a listeners choice award too! One reader congratulated me but added “Now you can’t write your next book Losing the Signal Awards!” Image I am having so much fun with my Seestar 50! It allows me to make gorgeous pictures like these images of Comets Lemmon and SWAN, visible tonight, straight from my iPhone and direct to you! Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=mA-nXjtDJBU In this video, I dive headfirst into the decades-long mystery of dark matter—a cosmic enigma that accounts for 85% of the universe, yet remains stubbornly invisible to our instruments. Joined by renowned UC San Diego physicist Kaixuan Ni and graduate student Zihao Xu, we explore the controversial claims of Italy’s DAMA/LIBRA experiment, which has reported a signal for dark matter for almost 30 years, and why the scientific community remains divided. Click here to watch! Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Sponsored This edition of the Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message is sponsored by Superhuman. Ever feel like your inbox is a black hole? No matter how much you scroll, the unread count just keeps growing. Deadlines vanish past the event horizon. That urgent collaborator message? It’s out there somewhere — but finding it is harder that herding thousands of Schrödinger’s cats. You’ve tried AI add-ons

Plankton Run This Planet. You’re Just Renting Space

Plankton Run This Planet. You’re Just Renting Space Dear Magicians, Plankton (Greek: planktos = “wanderer” or “drifter”)—organisms that float through water, unable to swim against currents. The same root that gave us “planet” (wandering stars across the sky) and “plane” (a flat wandering surface through space). These drifters don’t navigate. They don’t strive. They exist at such an overwhelming scale that they dictate planetary chemistry. And speaking of planets, the word ‘planet‘ also means wanderer — as in the five naked-eye visible objects the ancients saw (and named five of their, and our, days after). If you can read this, you’re breathing oxygen made by wanderers that outnumber you a thousand-to-one and couldn’t care less about your existence. Welcome to the humbling reality: plankton—not humans—are Earth’s true planetary engineers. We’ve convinced ourselves we matter because we build cities and launch rockets, but every second breath you take exists because microscopic phytoplankton decided to photosynthesize today. Remove us? Ecosystems shrug. Remove them? The biosphere collapses within years. The Math Doesn’t Lie Marine phytoplankton generate ~50% of Earth’s oxygen while processing gigatons of carbon annually—regulating atmospheric CO₂ more effectively than every carbon capture technology we’ve ever conceived. Zooplankton anchor oceanic food webs, feeding everything from anchovies to blue whales. Their biomass turnover rates operate at scales that make human industrial output look like background noise in a planetary symphony we didn’t compose and can’t conduct. This isn’t sentiment—it’s thermodynamic dominance. These passive drifters collectively wield more metabolic power than all human civilization combined. They’re not “important” in some feel-good ecological sense—they’re the substrate upon which complex life operates. We’re passengers on their planet. The Cosmic Gut-Check Now apply this logic universally. If Earth—our supposed crown jewel—prioritizes microbes over mammals by orders of magnitude, why assume intelligence dominates elsewhere? The Fermi Paradox might have a brutally simple answer: microbial life is the universe’s default setting. Technological civilizations? Rare statistical accidents. Most exoplanets probably host bacterial mats, algal blooms, prokaryotic empires—and absolutely zero beings capable of noticing. Intelligence demands improbable convergences: stable stars, liquid water, plate tectonics, oxygenation events, mass extinctions driving complexity. Plankton-equivalents just need chemistry, energy gradients, and time. The cosmos might be thick with slime and empty of minds—a microbial monopoly more existentially unsettling than loneliness. Wanderers upon wanderers, drifting through cosmic oceans, utterly indifferent to whether consciousness ever emerges. Why We Hate This Truth Here’s the uncomfortable part: we’ve built entire philosophies around human exceptionalism. “Fitness for life” arguments that leverage billions of planets to claim Earth’s specialness collapse under inspection. Life didn’t fine-tune the universe—the universe’s parameters filtered for rare chemistry-permitting pockets like ours. Plankton aren’t cosmically privileged. They’re just competent enough to exploit local conditions. Humans aren’t evolution’s teleological endpoint—we’re a contingent experiment that stumbled into self-awareness and mistook that for cosmic significance. The etymological irony cuts deep: we named these organisms “wanderers” as if we were the settled, purposeful ones. But planets wander through space. Planes slice through dimensions with no destination. And plankton drift through oceans, accomplishing more by accident than we do by design. The Real Hierarchy Abandon the Great Chain of Being. Plankton don’t “control” Earth through intent—they co-constitute it through metabolic ubiquity. Importance is observer-dependent nonsense. We’re not useless—we’re just dramatically overestimating our weight class. The Punchline Your Mars colony? It’ll breathe algae-made oxygen. Your quantum computers? Running on a planet oxygenated by diatoms. Your consciousness—that miraculous emergent property you’re so proud of? Exists downstream of microbial infrastructure perfected 2.4 billion years before neurons evolved. Plankton didn’t build cathedrals or write symphonies. They just keep the lights on while we congratulate ourselves for noticing. Not inspiring. Not depressing. Just PLANE true. Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O4XS4L_75Y I appeared on the The Poetry of Reality with Richard Dawkins show and had a wonderful time. In this episode, we explore Richard’s latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead along with a wide array of topics including AI, the extended phenotype, evolution, the possibility of alien life followed by audience questions. This episode was filmed as part of Richard Dawkins’ tour. Genius The Fourth Dimension, available on the App Store, is a 30-page interactive book designed to make the concept of four-dimensional space accessible to everyone. Instead of relying on static images or videos, the app uses a unique 3D touch interface, allowing users to manipulate a tesseract and intuitively grasp the fourth dimension. Praised by outlets like BuzzFeed and The Verge, it’s described as mind-blowing and engaging, making complex math ideas fun and understandable. With a 4.8-star rating from nearly 2,000 users, it’s a standout educational tool for anyone curious about higher dimensions. Image I caught this once-in-a-lifetime shot from UCSD’s new observatory in Julian, CA Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=aPGoQcLjnWI In this episode, I sit down with visionary geneticist George Church, whose team has made a scientific breakthrough that’s nothing short of mind-blowing: creating bacteria immune to every virus on Earth. Not just resistant—completely immune. This innovation could revolutionize medicine, giving us virus-proof cell therapies and, perhaps one day, virus-proof humans. ​Click here to watch! Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Advertisement This edition of the Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message is sponsored by Shortform. Steven Pinker’s new book When Everyone Knows was fascinating. But it was a challenge to prepare for our interview because Steven is so prolific. To understand his body of work more fully, I relied on Shortform’s superpowered guides. Their app covers The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now, with commentary that connects Pinker’s ideas to thinkers like Daniel Kahneman and Richard Dawkins. As a scientist and professor, I also use Shortform’s Chrome extension daily—it generates instant AI summaries of long articles, condensing Nobel-caliber content into digestible insights without slowing me down before my next lecture.My audience gets an exclusive deal: start a free trial plus get three extra months free with an annual plan at shortform.com/briankeating. Upcoming Episode Prof. Daniel Whiteson will be on The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast soon. This UC Irvine particle physicist and co-host of Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe has written a deliciously subversive new book—Do Aliens Speak Physics?—that interrogates whether our most cherished assumption about extraterrestrial communication (that math and

From Sinai to Sputnik, One Simple Tool That Saved Civilization

From Sinai to Sputnik, One Simple Tool That Saved Civilization Dear Magicians, The Tool That Deserves a Nobel Prize Three thousand years ago, Moses carried stone tablets down from Sinai. In 1935, Boeing engineers invented the pre-flight checklist after their prototype B-17 crashed, killing both pilots who forgot to disengage the gust locks. In 2009, surgeon Atul Gawande reduced surgical deaths by 47% using a simple two-minute checklist. The pattern? Checklists save lives precisely when human expertise fails. A few years ago, 800 feet down the runway in my Cirrus SR22, I glanced at my flap indicator. Something wasn’t right. The needle showed half-flaps when I’d set full. My hand went to the throttle. Abort. According to the NTSB, flight crew failure to use checklists was the probable cause of Northwest Airlines Flight 255’s crash in 1987, killing 154 people. My error would’ve been less dramatic—maybe just an embarrassing go-around, maybe something worse—but the checklist caught it. Not my memory. Not my 1200+ hours of experience. The laminated card on my kneeboard. Gawande distinguishes between “errors of ignorance” (not knowing enough) and “errors of ineptitude” (not using what we know). I knew flaps matter. But in that moment, rushing through the runup, my brain filed “flaps” under “handled” without verifying. The Passover Seder—performed by millions annually—follows 15 precise steps called the “order.” Not suggestions. Not guidelines. Steps. The Ten Commandments used ten items because that’s the limit of reliable human recall. Boeing’s first aviation checklist established the principle that human memory is unreliable for mission-critical procedures. Why don’t checklists have a Nobel Prize category? Because they’re “too simple.” We celebrate complexity—breakthrough quantum mechanical tunneling won this week. We don’t celebrate the prosaic, the obvious, the boring. But when Gawande’s WHO surgical checklist was tested across eight hospitals worldwide, major complications dropped 36% and deaths fell 47%. Since checklists became standard in commercial aviation in the 1980s, accidents have steadily declined. No drug has that safety profile. No technology has that reliability. Here’s what makes checklists revolutionary: They assume you’re human. They don’t demand perfection. They don’t require genius. They acknowledge that even experts—especially experts—operate near cognitive overload. Gawande initially thought Harvard surgeons “didn’t need this.” Then he found the checklist catching errors every single week. My flap indicator wasn’t a life-or-death moment. But it was my moment—the split second where procedure overrode pride, where the checklist I’d mentally skipped in the hangar would’ve sent me rotating into an underpowered, asymmetric climb. This week’s musing: What high-stakes procedure in your life lacks a checklist? Not because it’s unimportant. Because you’re “too experienced” to need one. That’s exactly when you need it most. Go make one. Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance Great summary from Podcast Notes!​ Cosmologist Brian Keating interviewed dozens of Nobel laureates for his book Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner and found one pattern: they build genuine relationships through unscalable work, not networks. Nobel physicist Donna Strickland exemplified this by declining his foreword request—she was overcommitted, demonstrating his core lesson about guarding time ruthlessly. Keating runs weekly office hours with zero students. Those who attend build relationships leading to jobs and mentorship. Communication matters as much as discovery. The lesson: Do work that doesn’t scale. Build real relationships. Guard your time fiercely., Cal is joined by Dr. Brian Keating, the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UCSD, and one of the most prolific popularizers of science around (you may have seen him recently chatting about cosmology with Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman). They talk about Keating’s new book, HOW TO FOCUS LIKE A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER, as well as many other topics, including a deep look at Keating’s unusual path to academia, and a deconstruction of what’s needed to succeed at the highest levels of academia. Genius https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=LM5zKxoXyLQ Dr. Lou Ignarro exemplifies the quiet genius that often changes the world by accident! Image The James Webb Space Telescope, the universe’s most expensive cat toy, is celebrating its third birthday by giving the Cat’s Paw Nebula a cosmic belly rub. This giant space-cat, located 5,500 light-years away, has been hiding some juicy star-forming secrets, and Webb is ready to spill the tea. Or, in this case, the stardust. Credit: Mike Adler Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=UHGOf_E4ej0 Brian Keating sits down with the legendary astronaut, author, and all-around space explorer, Chris Hadfield, for a fascinating conversation that rockets from the Cold War origins of the space race to the cutting edge of today’s cosmic rivalries. Expect thought-provoking discussions on the moon landing hoax conspiracies, the psychology behind UFO and UAP sightings, and why checklists—both in life and in space—are written in blood. Hadfield also reflects on the delicate dance of international cooperation, the legacy of controversial figures like Wernher von Braun, and the future tension between exploration and competition with nations like China. ​Click here to watch! Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Advertisement When Chris Hadfield told me astronauts live and die by checklists, I smiled—because so do I. Just, in my case, the stakes are a little lower: Quantum mechanics lecture? Check. Podcast prep? Check. Orthodontist rubber bands? Check. For years, I’ve used Todoist to keep my personal chaos and my team’s projects aligned. Unlike bloated project management tools that feel like a second job, Todoist is lightweight, powerful, and actually fun to use. It keeps everyone on track without endless status meetings or confusing dashboards. If you run a small or medium team, Todoist Business is the mission control you need. And as a subscriber of Into the Impossible, you get 30 days free. ​ Try it here: https://get.todoist.io/ukirup​ Checklists keep astronauts alive. Todoist keeps the rest of us productive.

You probably got this planet-sized fact wrong (87% did)

You probably got this planet-sized fact wrong (87% did) Dear Magicians, I need to tell you something that’s been keeping me up at night. Last week, I asked my X and YouTube audiences a simple question: “Which planet is closest to Earth on average?” 87% got it wrong. These aren’t random people. These are folks who voluntarily watch astronomy content. Smart people. Curious people. Most said Venus. Or Mars. Some even said Ceres was it (it’s not even a planet!) Wrong. The answer is Mercury. I know. Many astronomers didn’t believe it either at first. Here’s why your brain failed you. You’re thinking about the closest Venus ever gets to Earth — about 38 million kilometers. That’s closer than Mercury ever gets. But that’s not the question. The question is average distance. Over time. As the planets orbit. And here’s the thing: Venus and Earth are on similar orbits around the Sun. About half the time, Venus is on the complete opposite side of the Sun from us. Way out there. Like 258 million kilometers away. Mercury stays closer to the middle. Always near the Sun. Never wandering too far from the center of the solar system. When you do the math — and scientists have done this with simulations — Mercury averages 1.04 astronomical units from Earth. Venus? 1.14. Mercury wins. Think of it this way. Imagine runners on a circular track. You and Venus start on opposite sides of the same track. Mercury is on the inside track. Who are you closer to on average? The person who’s sometimes next to you but often across the stadium? Or the person who stays near the center? The center wins. Every time. Here’s the wild part. Mercury isn’t just closest to Earth on average. It’s closest to Mars. To Jupiter. To Neptune. Mercury is the closest planet to every other planet in the solar system. Mind. Blown. Why does this matter? Because if 87% of my scientifically literate audience gets basic orbital mechanics wrong, what does that say about how we teach space? How we think about distance? How we trust our intuitions about things we can’t directly experience? This is a Copernican moment. We assumed Venus was our neighbor because it’s next door in the planetary lineup. But space doesn’t work like houses on a street. The lesson? Question even the “obvious” stuff. Especially the obvious stuff. Here’s a fun trick: next time someone confidently tells you the Sun is the center of the Solar System ask them to prove it. Most can’t. Yet they assume it’s true. But don’t just watch their world collapse, like yours probably did five minutes ago. Help them understand. Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance https://youtu.be/5IO4e41C4ak?si=UIz-t4d3Z9_UlrsE Here’s Cal’s description of what the episode is about… Cal Newport talks with Brian Keating on how to focus like a Nobel prize winner in an In-Depth episode of the Deep Questions podcast. ​In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal is joined by Dr. Brian Keating, the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UCSD, and one of the most prolific popularizers of science around (you may have seen him recently chatting about cosmology with Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman). They talk about Keating’s new book, HOW TO FOCUS LIKE A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER, as well as many other topics, including a deep look at Keating’s unusual path to academia, and a deconstruction of what’s needed to succeed at the highest levels of academia. Genius I’m up against some real geniuses and need your help! When I wrote Losing the Nobel Prize, I thought my destiny was clear: runner-up forever. But plot twist: The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast is a Finalist in the 2025 Signal Awards (Science & Education). That means we might finally replace my Nobel “L” with a shiny “W.” There’s just one problem: I need your help –The Listener’s Choice Award is decided by you. Not a committee of Swedish academics who can ignore me. Not a panel of judges. Just you. 👉 Cast your vote here! Hurry — Voting closes October 9, 2025. Look, I’ve made peace with losing the Nobel. But losing a popularity contest where I can literally ask for votes? That would be embarrassing. Help me swap Nobel heartbreak for Signal glory. Image Sunset from the Perservence Rover on the 3rd closest planet [on average] to Earth — Mars. Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=RP_0MpESQy0 What if everything you thought you knew about the Big Bang was just a brilliant myth? Join me as I sit down with cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi to unravel the deepest mysteries of the universe, from cosmic singularities and creation myths to the controversial question: Was the Big Bang really the beginning of it all? Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Advertisement This edition of the Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message is sponsored by Shortform. Steven Pinker’s new book When Everyone Knows was fascinating. But it was a challenge to prepare for our interview because Steven is so prolific. To understand his body of work more fully, I relied on Shortform’s superpowered guides. Their app covers The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now, with commentary that connects Pinker’s ideas to thinkers like Daniel Kahneman and Richard Dawkins. As a scientist and professor, I also use Shortform’s Chrome extension daily—it generates instant AI summaries of long articles, condensing Nobel-caliber content into digestible insights without slowing me down before my next lecture.My audience gets an exclusive deal: start a free trial plus get three extra months free with an annual plan at shortform.com/briankeating.

The Dangerous Side Effect of Being So Smart

The Dangerous Side Effect of Being So Smart Dear Magicians, Smart people fall for terrible physics all the time. This isn’t an accident. It’s predictable. The Galileo Complex Brilliant minds love playing the persecuted genius. They think mainstream rejection proves they’re right. Like Deepak Chopra claiming quantum consciousness, or electric universe theorists who say physicists are suppressing the truth. The more scientists dismiss them, the more certain they become. Overconfidence Spillover Success breeds dangerous confidence. A tech billionaire who built search algorithms assumes quantum mechanics can’t be harder than coding. Entrepreneurs who made fortunes in software suddenly think they’ve cracked fusion energy with a simple equation. They’re usually wrong. Pattern Obsession Analytical minds see patterns everywhere. Even where none exist. Like finding hidden codes in physical constants, such as claiming the fine structure constant contains the secrets of consciousness. Or connecting quantum entanglement to telepathy because both involve “spooky action.” The brain loves connections. Unified Theory Seduction Smart people crave simple explanations. When someone claims their single equation explains gravity, consciousness, and God, it’s irresistible. For example, theories that reduce all of physics to vibrating strings, or claims that everything is just information processing. Elegant. Beautiful. Wrong. Sophisticated Self-Deception Intelligence becomes the trap. Smart people build elaborate mathematical frameworks around bad ideas. Like string theorists who’ve spent decades on untestable theories, or consciousness researchers who mistake correlation for causation in quantum mechanics. They’re not stupid. That’s the problem. Academic Rebellion Brilliant outsiders despise “close-minded” professors. This emotional resistance to peer review creates echo chambers. For example, independent researchers who claim relativity is wrong, or engineers who think they’ve solved dark matter in their garage. No gatekeepers. No truth. Cherry-Picking Masters Smart people write ChatGPT assisted papers to support anything. They’ll cite legitimate quantum biology research to justify crystal healing, such as using photosynthesis studies to explain chakras. Evidence. Selectively applied. The tragedy? These aren’t fools. They’re often genuinely brilliant. Their gifts become their downfall. Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week and to those who celebrate, a Happy New Year! Brian Appearance https://youtu.be/fx8Q4bEPolQ “I cut out of getting a tattoo to have this conversation. That might sound ridiculous, but when physicist Brian Keating—the man who almost won a Nobel Prize and wrote a book about losing it—agrees to talk about focus and ADHD, you reschedule the ink. What I discovered in our 70-minute conversation completely reframed how I think about leadership, attention, and why your ADHD brain isn’t broken—it’s just operating on a different frequency.” – Ryan Hanley Genius In a stroke of scientific genius, researchers at the University of Chicago have engineered the first biological qubit, built from fluorescent proteins capable of sustaining multiple quantum states. Unlike traditional qubits trapped in superconductors or ions, this innovation bridges the quantum and biological realms, opening the door to sensors seamlessly integrated with living tissue. Such genius-level engineering could transform medicine and biology, enabling ultra-sensitive detection of cellular processes. Feder et al. (Nature, 2025) reveal how this biological qubit, symbolized by a red star in their comparative framework, redefines what counts as a quantum system—bringing life itself into the quantum frontier. Image Speaking of Genius – We hit #1 in that category beating out Flow! Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJGKdZD30K__XkD2TDGq1pQo8Q__6vBhB&v=2j0Mv74VjTI What if everything you thought you knew about the Big Bang was just a brilliant myth? Join me as I sit down with cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi to unravel the deepest mysteries of the universe, from cosmic singularities and creation myths to the controversial question: Was the Big Bang really the beginning of it all? Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Advertisement Your review of Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner doesn’t disappear — it becomes part of the permanent intellectual record. Future readers will see YOUR NAME guiding their decision. Future Nobel laureates might read YOUR WORDS. One insight. One minute. One lasting mark on history. (Plot twist: I actually need one honest critical review. Intellectual courage welcomed.) Advertisement By popular demand, and for my mental health 😳, I am running a paid “Office Hours” where you all can connect with me for the low price of $19.99 per hour. I get a lot of requests for coffee, to meet with folks one on one, to read people’s Theories of Everything etc. Due to extreme work overload, I’m only able to engage directly with supporters who show an ongoing commitment to dialogue—which is why I host a monthly Zoom session exclusively for patrons in the $19.99/month tier. It’s also available for paid Members of my Youtube channel at the Cosmic Office Hours level (also $19.99/month). Join here and see you in my office hours! Upcoming Episode Commander Chris Hadfield will be on The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast soon. The legendary astronaut who commanded the International Space Station and captivated the world with his zero-gravity “Space Oddity” video has just released “Final Orbit,” the explosive third thriller in his Apollo Murders series that weaves together real Cold War espionage with an alternate space race history involving American astronauts, Soviet cosmonauts, and China’s secret first astronaut launch. What makes this fiction uniquely compelling is Hadfield’s authentic insider knowledge—he draws from actual historical figures like Qian Xuesen (the disgraced American-Chinese scientist who became the father of Chinese aerospace) to create a gripping thriller set during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission where a deadly “accident” threatens to derail Soviet-American cooperation in space. What questions would you like me to ask the only person who could write space thrillers this authentically—having actually lived in space himself! ​Submit your questions here!

Your Colleagues Are Wrong About Focus

Your Colleagues Are Wrong About Focus Dear Magicians Years ago, while my collaborators were clinking champagne glasses in Stockholm, I was hunched over a desk grading freshman physics exams. That’s when I realized something awkward: winning isn’t about being a genius—it’s about paying attention longer than anyone else without wandering off to get to inbox zero! The academic world sells us the fairy tale of “eureka moments.” Supposedly, breakthroughs require a mystical flash of insight, decades of hoop-jumping, and maybe a lightning bolt or two. Spoiler: that’s marketing, not reality. The Secret Your Department Chair Doesn’t Want You to Know Real Nobel winners act less like lucky visionaries and more like professional assassins of distraction. They know the game: guard your focus like a toddler guards his binky. Jennifer Doudna didn’t figure out CRISPR while scrolling Instagram. Roger Penrose didn’t prove black hole theorems in between faculty meetings. They built careers out of saying no—to everything—until all that remained was the one problem worth solving. Meanwhile, the rest of us fill out grant forms, chair committees, and argue over coffee budgets. Guess which strategy works better? Physics Has Been Trying to Tell Us This Electrons don’t multitask. Per Pauli, they pick a unique state, stick to it, and only change when absolutely forced. Your brain works the same way. The uncertainty principle isn’t just physics—it’s life. The more you define your focus, the blurrier everything else gets. Laureates embrace that trade-off. The rest of us hedge our bets with ten side projects, and we get—well, tenure, if we’re lucky. The Institution as Enemy #1 Universities reward distraction like casinos reward gamblers. Write more papers, chase more grants, chair more committees, post more on LinkedIn. And then wonder why nobody has an original thought left. I’ve watched brilliant colleagues drown in endless service meetings while their science fossilized. The system isn’t malfunctioning—it’s doing exactly what it was built to do: prevent concentrated, independent thought. The Physics of Focus Think of attention as quantum: You can’t half-focus. It’s all or nothing. Measuring progress usually ruins it. Juggle too many projects, and they all collapse into mush. These aren’t metaphors. They’re the operating rules of creative work. Want the Playbook? That’s why I wrote Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner. Not because I have a golden medal (I don’t, and probably never will), but because I’ve studied 22 people who do. And they’ve all hacked attention in the same unglamorous way: relentless focus, often in spite of the very institutions meant to support them. Warning: this isn’t your usual productivity pep talk. It’s the uncomfortable truth about what breakthrough thinking actually takes. ​Get it now before the 99 cent sale expires like your dreams of inbox zero!​ Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week, Brian Appearance Fellow professor and podcaster Daniel Whiteson hosted me last week to discuss, what else, Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner! I really enjoyed the conversation and the insights about the history of science from his other guest, Prof. Lydia Patton. Genius As I said in Losing the Nobel Prize, telescopes are time machines. Another character in that same book, William Herschel said they are capable of “penetrating into time”. Hat tip to Corey Powell who wrote about Herschel’s notes from 1800 where he first coined this phrase! Image A breathtaking glimpse of the tiny Moon ‘Daphnis’ creating giant waves in Saturn’s Rings. 📸 NASA Conversation In this episode, I dive into the tantalizing question: Are we really living in a simulation? Joining him is Dr. Rizwan Virk—MIT scientist, entrepreneur, and best-selling author—who argues that it’s not only possible, but more likely than not that our reality is a highly advanced virtual simulation, not unlike The Matrix. Join me and Riz Virk as they attempt to answer: Are we living inside a master simulation, and what could it all mean for the future of science, technology, and humanity? ​Click here to watch! Interactive AI Content Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads! Advertisement Amazon’s Kindle sale on Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner ends Wednesday— don’t miss your last chance to get it for just 99 cents! ​Don’t miss this opportunity— the sale ends soon!

My Birthday Gift to You 🎁

My Birthday Gift to You 🎁 Today is my actual birthday — and instead of asking for presents, I want to give you one. ​🚀 My new book, Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, has launched! It’s packed with the wisdom of 9 Nobel laureates into practical strategies to concentrate your creativity and ignite your career. Endorsed by productivity supernovas like Cal Newport and Ali Abdaal, it’s designed for anyone who wants to sharpen their focus and think like the best minds in the world. Here’s the deal: ⭐ Launch Week Special — Kindle copy for only $0.99 💫 Cheaper than your morning coffee, and lasts far longer than the caffeine hit 🌌 A playbook for focus that’s out of this world​ 👉 Grab your copy → ​here​ Do me this birthday favor: pick up the book today. Later this week, I’ll ask you for a stellar review to help it shine even brighter. I couldn’t be more excited for its “birth day” today — which just so happens to be my own birthday 🎉 — so you know exactly what I’d like as a present. ​I was thrilled to receive “blurbs” from productivity gurus like Cal Newport and Ali Abdaal. ​Into The Impossible Vol. 2:​ ​Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner On sale for just a week: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner! For the next week only, you can get the Kindle copy for only $0.99 … ten times less than a meteorite 😀 you can get the wisdom of 9 Nobel Prize winners delivered straight to your Kindle or tablet! ​Don’t miss this opportunity— the sale ends soon on 9/16! With gratitude, Brian KeatingProfessor of Physics, UC San DiegoAuthor of Into the Impossible Vol. 2: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner PS. I’ll be asking for reviews later this week — but if you want to be a shooting star 🎇and share the book on your social media right away, you’ll make my birthday wish come true. PPS. This might be the cheapest “textbook” you’ll ever buy — and the only one you’ll actually enjoy finishing. Subscribe to my podcast! More than 2M downloads!